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THE LIFE AND WORK 



OF- 



JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN 



D. D., LL. D. 



BY 



THEODOKE APPEL 

/ 9 

D. D. 



PECTUS FACIT THEQLOGUM 




PHILADELPHIA 

REFORMED CHURCH PUBLICATION HOUSE: 

907 Arch Street 

1889 



, A/4 r 



Copyright bt 
THEODORE APPEL 

1889 



The New Era Printing House 
Lancaster, Pa 



iv5 









Alumnis Omnibus et Singulis 

Academise Marsnallianse 

Atque 

Franklinianse et Marsliallianse 

Hoc Opus 

Dicitur, Dicatur, ac Dedicator 

ato 

Auctore 



FREDERICK A. GAST, 
W. U. HENSEL, 
THEODORE APPEL, 
JOHN S. STAHR, 
CALVIN S. GERHARD, 

Publishing Committee. 



INTRODUCTION 



THIS biography needs no apology. It is the history of a noble 
life and an exalted character. In whatever light he may be 
viewed, Dr. Nevin occupies high rank among the distinguished men 
of his age. An eminent scholar, a profound theologian, an inde- 
pendent thinker, a vigorous writer and an earnest Christian, he 
exerted a powerful influence, which will not cease to be felt for 
many generations to come. It is only right, therefore, that the life 
and labors of one who touched the higher spiritual interests of hu- 
manity at so many points should be recorded, that the world may 
know what manner of man he was, what truths he taught, what 
conflicts he waged, and what measure of success he achieved. 

Dr. Nevin was a man of broad and thorough scholarship. With 
a strong and richly endowed mind well disciplined by years of hard 
study, he accumulated vast treasures of learning, which were ever 
at his command. There are few departments of knowledge in which 
he was not at home. When he entered on the study of theology 
and philosophy, in which he rose to such great eminence, he had 
already laid a solid foundation in the Classics, mathematics and 
history. Equipped with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and 
Greek, he was well fitted, both by his attainments and his tastes, 
for the pursuit of Biblical science, to which his earliest official 
labors were devoted ; and it is not improbable that, if he had con- 
tinued to make this branch of theology his specialty, he would have 
come to stand among the foremost Biblical scholars of America. 

But when called to Mercersburg, it became his duty to teach dog- 
matic theology in the Seminary, and, after the death of Dr. Rauch, 
philosophy in Marshall College. His brief contact with that able 
and genial scholar afforded him a deeper insight into the immense 
wealth of German thought, of which he had only had a passing and 
unsatisfactory glimpse before. He had already acquired a good 
working knowledge of the language, and he now devoted himself to 
the arduous task of mastering the whole field of German philoso- 
phy and theology. It was at a time when, in this country at least, 



VI INTRODUCTION 

all German systems alike were regarded with suspicion ; but in his 
unwearied search for truth, he determined to make their acquaint- 
ance, and was rewarded by having a new intellectual world opened 
up to his view. 

His learning, though broad and varied, was especially marked 
by thoroughness. He had no ambition to be an encyclopedia of 
knowledge. To have full mastery of one subject was infinitel}' 
more to him than to have a superficial acquaintance with many. 
He was not a man who kept himself constantly surrounded by a 
great multitude of books. It was a surprise to his friends, at least 
during the latter period of his life, to find how few books he had 
at hand. You entered his study, but saw no library. On his writ- 
ing-table lay his Hebrew Old Testament and his Greek New Testa- 
ment, which were never absent from his side, and besides these a. 
very few works connected with the study on which his mind was 
then engaged. These he read and re-read and inwardly digested, 
till their contents became part of his very self. Any subject which 
claimed his attention completely absorbed him, and for the time 
filled his conversation as well as his thoughts. He kept it con- 
stantly before his mind until he saw it in all its length and breadth, 
its height and depth. 

It was this that made him the profound thinker he was. His 
mind was constitutionally of a philosophic cast. Imbued with a 
strong love of truth he was impelled to search for it as for hidden 
treasure. Traditional opinions and inherited beliefs had little value 
for him until he had examined them, tested them and proved them 
correct. A questioning attitude was natural to him. He readily 
detected the weakness and defects of any system and mercilessly 
exposed them to view. His mind was in fact severely critical, even 
toward conclusions he had himself reached by much study and re- 
flection. Hence it is not surprising that, during his long and 
thoughtful life, he passed through various phases of faith. To 
man}- he seemed to be ever vacillating. And indeed he was not 
stationary. Whatever lives advances from lower stages to higher, 
and the life of thought is no exception. It manifests itself either in 
the discovery of new truth, or, at least, in the fuller, clearer and 
more adequate apprehension of old truth. Only what is dead 
stands still. Dr. Nevin felt no pride in maintaining an unvarying 
uniformit}?" of thought. As soon as a form of truth appeared on 
more mature reflection to be unsatisfactory, he freety surrendered 
it and diligently sought for a higher and more perfect form. And 
so he seemed to himself to be always progressing, and yet in his 



INTRODUCTION Vll 

progress to be self-consistent, at least in the sense that he was 
constantly advancing upward along one unconsciously predeter- 
mined line. 

However that may be, it is undeniable that his mind had a won- 
derfully comprehensive grasp of truth. He viewed a subject on 
all sides and followed it out in all its bearings. It was as if the 
full vision presented itself at once to his gaze, and he saw it imme- 
diately in its broad sweep and then gradually in its single features. 
Not unfrequently his glance was almost prophetic. He anticipated 
many truths, the importance of which is only now beginning to 
dawn on the consciousness of the religious world. And he did it 
not so much by logical ratiocination as by direct intuition. He 
was remarkable for his power of generalization, or rather, we 
should say, his intellect was constitutionally fitted to lay hold, first 
on a general truth, and then to trace it out in its manifold relations. 
Particular truths never appeared to his mind in their isolation. 
Single facts possessed value for him only as they were compre- 
hended in a general life*. This is the characteristic of philosophic 
genius, and Dr. Nevin displayed it in a veiy high degree. 

He was a singularly independent thinker. Though not disre- 
gardful of what his predecessors had accomplished, keenly alive, 
rather, to the results of their thought, he passed their conclusions 
through the fire of his own powerful mind, tested them, refined 
them of their dross and adopted them only in a purified form. Cer- 
tain thinkers, like Schleiermacher, Neander and Rothe, possessed 
a wonderful fascination for him ; but he never followed them blindly, 
or surrendered himself to them in slavish dependence. His mind 
was always open in a childlike way to the influence of other strong 
minds, but it was too vigorous and healthy to succumb to them in 
absolute submission. For a while, indeed, he might be too greatly 
under their sway, but, sooner or later, he recovered himself and re- 
asserted his independence. 

He was not a creative genius in the sense that Kant was in phil- 
osoplry and Schleiermacher in theology. He did not originate a 
system of thought. His philosophical and theological impulses 
came mainly from Germany. But he was original in this, that, 
having submitted the results of German thought to the scrutin}^ of 
his own gigantic intellect, he adapted them to the sphere in which 
he was placed. He reproduced German theology in a form suitable 
to his country and age. 

But behind the great scholar and the greater thinker was the still 
greater man. Nobility of soul was stamped even upon his outward 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

form. He was a man of marked appearance. His lofty brow, his 
firing set mouth, the lines of his face, the peculiar gleam of his 
eye, and the strong, deep tones of his voice, together with a general 
air of abstraction, all witnessed to the refinement of intellectual and 
moral culture, to a life of earnest and profound thought, and to an 
unusual force of character. Though naturally of a shy, retiring 
disposition, his presence at ouce made itself felt wherever he chanced 
to be. Even among those to whom he was unknown, his appear- 
ance always attracted attention and compelled respect. 

He was intellectually open, honest and without guile. You felt, 
when in conversation with him, that he was pouring out his inmost 
soul and that he had no reserved opinions, nothing, in fact, which 
he was trying to conceal. His convictions were strong, and for 
him at least the} 7 were true; and the truth, as he saw it, took com- 
plete possession of his whole being. It was not something for the 
logical understanding merely, an idle speculation without any prac- 
tical bearing whatever. It was for him a matter of life or death, 
and he felt constrained to give it the fullest and clearest expression 
by tongue or pen for the benefit of the world. With all the earnest- 
ness of his nature he contended against every opposing error. He 
was often charged with being simply negative, breaking down with- 
out building up. He was negative, however, only because he was 
so positive. When he came into possession of a truth which he 
deemed of vital importance to men, he could not refrain from giv- 
ing it utterance. Having the courage of his convictions, he never 
hesitated to brave all opposition at whatever cost to himself. 
There was a time when Romanism on the one hand, and the larger 
section of Protestantism on the other, were arrayed against him; 
y et he stood firm and undaunted, assured that time would vindicate 
the truth of his position. But whether in this he was right or 
wrong, who must not admire the sublime heroism displayed in 
thus contending almost single-handed against such tremendous 
odds ! It was possible only to" a soul thorough^ in earnest, keenly 
alive to the truth, and endowed with extraordinary strength of will. 

The key to Dr. Kevin's character Islj in his moral earnestness. 
Whatever came to him as a duty he did with all his might. In the 
early part of his Seminar}^ course he was dismayed Ir^ what seemed 
to him the difficulties to be overcome in the study of Hebrew. In 
his discouragement he asked himself whether it was really worth his 
while to spend the time and labor necessary to acquire a language, 
which was mastered by few, and forgotten or laid aside by nearly 
all. He had almost resolved to discontinue the study when, through 



INTRODUCTION IX 

the judicious counsels of a friend, he reconsidered the question, 
and, having on serious reflection come to see how indispensable a 
knowledge of that language is to one who would understand the 
Old Testament aright, he addressed himself with vigor to his task, 
and with such success that he read the entire Hebrew Bible through 
before completing his student life in the Seminary at Princeton. 

Such earnestness aroused by a keen and strong sense of duty 
characterized his life from its commencement to its close. He 
could do nothing in a half-hearted way, whether in study, in con- 
troversy, or in the sphere of practical activity. He began his career 
as a severe and stern reformer, denouncing intemperance, slavery, 
fanaticism and wrong of every kind. He outlived this negative 
activity, but only to seek, in a higher and positive realm of life, the 
cure for the maladies that afflict humanity. All along he had had 
faith in the Gospel as the divine remedy for human evils, but he 
thought that the Christianity by which he was surrounded lacked 
the spirituality and power needed to accomplish its mission in the 
present era of history. The circumstances amid which he stood in 
the earlier years of his ministry kindled in him a reformatory zeal, 
which became ever less negative and more inward and positive, as 
he grew in wisdom and grace. During the period of his public life 
there prevailed an impression as false as it was common, that 
Dr. Nevin was extravagantly speculative, an intellectual dreamer, 
and it was remarked hy some who were not in sympathy with his 
thinking, that it would have been better for the world and the 
church if, instead of being a mere theorizer, he had devoted the 
force of his giant intellect to practical work, especially in his own 
denomination, where it seemed to be particularly needed. Re- 
marks of this kind, however, were based, not on facts, but on fancies, 
and grew out of an inadequate knowledge of the man. He was in 
truth eminently practical in all his tendencies. Few, indeed, were 
more so. With his intensely earnest nature, how could it be other- 
wise? With him philosophy and even theology had no interest or 
value, apart from their actual bearings on the welfare of man and 
the progress of society. He scarcely ever wrote an article for the 
press, however metaphysical or speculative in its character, in which 
he did not seek to promote the higher spiritual interests of the 
community or the Church. The practical element in Christianity 
seemed to be ever uppermost and predominant in his mind as in 
that of Neander. 

In his sphere of labor in the Reformed Church, Providence gave 
him ample range for displaying the practical character of his mind. 



X INTRODUCTION 

He could never content himself with simply doing his prescribed 
work of faithfully preparing laborers for the field white for the 
harvest, and then indolently sitting down to mope and mourn over 
the desolations of Zion. On the contrary, as opportunity pre- 
sented itself, he united with his brethren in the promotion of every 
good word and work. He seldom attempted to initiate an} r move- 
ment himself, but when others proposed a measure which had a 
prospect of usefulness and gave promise of success, he lent it a 
vigorous support and generally b} T his pen became its most power- 
ful advocate. He took a comprehensive view of his duties as a 
theological professor. The Seminary was to his mind a vital part 
of the Church to which it belongs, in very truth, its beating heart. 
He identified its success with the prosperit}- of the interest which 
it represented. He could not feel satisfied, therefore, with laboring 
for the one without at the same time embracing the other. Enjoy- 
ing, as he did, the confidence of the Church, he took a more or less 
active part in all its important movements, and his judgment always 
carried with it much weight. For many } T ears he virtually occupied 
the position of episcopos in the Church, and during this period the 
history of the Church was in a large measure embraced in his life* 
Everj^where he appears as the cautious pilot, skillfully guiding the 
vessel. B} T common consent he was acknowledged as primus inter 
pares, and was very generally regarded as the Church's wisest and 
best guide. 

It was his intense earnestness that made Dr. Nevin the sharp 
polemic and hard controversialist he was. He battled for what he 
had come to regard as the truth, as vital truth, to the supreme im- 
portance of which the Church needed to have its mind aroused. 
He could not be indifferent without being recreant to his trust. 
He saw on eve^ hand what he believed to be errors of the most 
dangerous kind, while the guardians of the truth slept unconscious 
of the peril by which it was beset. The time had come, and he held 
it as his task, to expose these errors with the wrong tendencies and 
false measures to which they gave birth. And he did it in plain, 
unmistakeable terms. As a matter of course, he called forth fierce 
opposition and often the bitterest hostility. He came into collision 
with the religious thought of a large part of the Christian Church. 
Often he was misrepresented, oftener misunderstood. Yet in spite 
of ignorance and prejudice, he maintained his position without 
faltering. Xo amiy of hostile forces could make him swerve an 
inch from the truth and right which he believed he possessed. 
Xaturally in the heat of such a contest there would be on either 



INTRODUCTION XI 

side many a hasty and harsh word which would better have been 
left unspoken, but which in calmer moments would be regretted 
and recalled. But now that the battle is ended, no one, whether he 
regard Dr. Nevin as in the wrong or in the right, can help admiring 
his moral earnestness in proclaiming what he, in spite of its un- 
popular^, believed to be the truth, and his unshaken courage in 
maintaining it without regard to personal consequences against the 
most formidable opposition. 

To many it may seem strange to hear it said that Dr. Nevin pos- 
sessed all the delicate sensibilities and tenderness of a woman. His 
voice was gruff and his manner somewhat brusque, leaving a natural 
impression of severity and sternness. And this impression was 
confirmed by the fact that in public controversj^, when he believed 
the interests of truth and righteousness were at stake, he gave, as 
he received, man}- a hard blow. Those, however, who knew him in 
the intimacy of private life, were aware of a gentleness, a tender 
heartedness, a loving kindness, not apparent to a stranger's eye. 
Little children loved him, as he loved them. His pupils regarded 
him with reverence and with affection as well. There was in him 
a deep well-spring of emotion which was easily touched. Some- 
times a flood of feeling overwhelmed him when preaching ; and at 
such times it was painful to witness that strong nature, struggling 
hard for several moments to choke down his emotions and regain 
control of himself. 

Dr. Nevin was habitually of a serious mind. Notwithstanding 
his powerful assaults on Puritanism as a religious system, his na- 
ture was cast in a Puritan mould. No one ever thought of ventur- 
ing on any levity in his presence. Not that his aspect was harsh 
or morose, rather there was in it a quiet sweetness, which, while it 
repressed the coarse jest and boisterous laugh, encouraged the 
humorous word and gentle smile. His intimate friends never felt 
anything forbidding in his manner, but they did feel when with him 
that life was too serious even for momentary trifling or folly. 

He lived, to a large extent, especially in his latter days, in com- 
munion with the spiritual world. That world was to him the su- 
preme reality. His thoughts dwelt upon it with constant delight. 
His conversation was filled with it, as the all-engrossing object of 
his meditations. Not that he ever lost interest in the affairs of this 
world ; on the contrary, he kept himself remarkably well informed 
concerning all social, scientific and religious movements. He 
studied them carefully, but mainly in their relation to Christ's spir- 
itual kingdom, which was for him, not something to be expected at 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

a remote future, but a present reality encompassing us at all times. 
His thoughts were never long absent from that higher spiritual 
realm, which, though dim and shadow}^ to many, was so real and 
substantial to him. During the Centennial year he visited the Ex- 
position at Philadelphia and on his return, when asked, by the 
writer, how he was pleased he replied : " On the whole, I may say 
that I was disappointed. I looked at the great Corliss engine, and 
it impressed me as something wonderful ; but all the while I could 
not help thinking how infinitely the spiritual transcends the nat- 
ural." While his eyes rested on those marvels of human inventive 
genius and artistic skill, of which, indeed, he soon wearied, his 
thoughts were far away with that which touched the innermost 
depths of his life. 

Of such a man, with his splendid qualities of mind and heart, we 
wish to know all that can be known. There is little, indeed, in his 
external history to enlist attention. He rarety went from home. 
He shrank from having his name brought prominently before the 
public. Even when urged to become a member of the American 
Committee for the revision of the Bible, he deemed it best, for rea- 
sons satisfactory to himself, to refuse. He cared nothing for fame, 
but much for righteousness and truth. His was the quiet life of 
the scholar, the thinker and the writer, and its interest lies largely' 
in the development of a powerful intellect and a strong Christian 
character. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that, in spite of his great attain- 
ments and profound influence, he was not as widely known as he 
deserved to be. His work was not of the kind that awakens the en- 
thusiasm of the populace. He was no public orator, no gifted 
leader of a popular movement, no stern reformer of acknowledged 
abuses. There was nothing in his career to call forth the applause 
of the multitude. He simply sat in his quiet study, and pondered, 
deeply and seriously pondered, the grand problem of life, and then 
gave forth to the world the results of his thought. What was there 
in all this to strike the popular fancy or win him fame among the 
masses ? 

Not that he was unknown. Strange as it ma}^ seem, he was better 
appreciated in Europe than in his native America. German theolo- 
gians, like Ebrard and Dorner, Thiersch and Dollinger, could esti- 
mate him at his true worth; and while they might dissent from 
many of his conclusions, they recognized his power as a religious 
thinker. Scholars in England as well as in America, who stood 
foremost in theological movements, were in correspondence with 



INTRODUCTION X1U 



him and eagerly sought his opinions on the religious questions of 
the day. The many pupils who were indebted to him for a large 
part of their theological and philosophical training learned to ad- 
mire the greatness of his mind and the loftiness of his character. 
There was besides a great circle which, though never under his im- 
mediate tuition, felt a debt of gratitude to him for quickened im- 
pulses to high thinking and right living. 

But to the religious world in general he was comparatively un- 
known. For more than half a century he was active with his pen. 
In books, tracts, and Review articles, he discussed many problems 
of far-reaching significance for the Church and society, with great 
depth and strength of thought and wonderful comprehensiveness 
of grasp. His attitude was in the main one of antagonism to pre- 
vailing views ; and whilst here and there, outside the bounds of his 
own Church, a solitary thinker grappled with him in single combat, 
the theological schools went quietly and unheedingly on their way. 
The hour had not yet arrived when these should be living questions 
for them. In his own Church, indeed, his writings always earnest^) 

''bold, clear and vigorous, excited much controversy which was often V 
violent and bitter- but the religious public in general seemed to 
think this was only a family quarrel with which it was in no wise 

, concerned, though, in truth, the questions at issue were of such / 
fundamental character as to involve an entire reconstruction of the | 
reigning conceptions of Christianity and the Church. 

Unfortunately for his renown, Dr. Nevin's lot was cast with one of 
the smaller tribes of Israel. From conscientious motives he left 
the Presbyterian Church, in which there opened up before him the 
prospect of a most brilliant future, to enter the German Reformed 
Church, which at the time was very insignificant as regards the 
territory it occupied and the membership it enrolled. Since then, 
it is true, and largely through his influence, it has made consider- 
able progress, and it is now far more widely known and better un- 
derstood. Fifty years ago, however, few beyond its own narrow 
boundaries were aware even of its existence. The Theological 
Seminary in which he taught and the College of which he was the 
head were located, at the time of his most intense activity, in the 
obscure village of Mercersburg, hidden from the public gaze. They 
were just struggling into life and were without prestige among the 
educational institutions of the land. Here he unselfishly labored, 
burying, as it seemed to many, his splendid talents from the sight 
of men. But he never had any desire to emerge from the moun- 
tains and valleys of his native state and occupy a position of more 



INTRODUCTION 



prominence before the world. His only ambition was to perform 
his special task in the humble position Providence had assigned 
him. And so, when he, a faithful servant of more than four score 
years, passed awa}^ from earth, many had not even heard of his 
name, or if they had, knew nothing of the achievements of his life. 

Moreover, of many of his opponents it ma}^ be truly said that not 
understanding him aright, they often attributed to him views he 
did not entertain. This was due, not to any vagueness of his opin- 
ions or to any lack of clearness in expressing them ; nor yet, we may 
well believe, to a deliberate purpose to wrong him by misrepresen- 
tation ; but simply to the fact that his intellectual world was for- 
eign to theirs and his modes of thought new and strange to them. 
And besides, as he was progressive in his tendencies, he passed 
through several phases of belief, wliich, while they seemed to him- 
self to be in the line of a continuous harmonious development of 
the truth, appeared to inany others to involve inconsistencies and 
self-contradictions. Quite naturally he was subjected to much mis- 
conception. In view of these facts it is highly desirable as an act 
of simple justice to the memory of a great and good man, that his 
life should be presented to the world as a whole, that all may see 
it, not in disconnected fragments, but as a unity in which the sev- 
eral parts stand in organic relation to each other. 

But this biography is called for by other and more general con- 
siderations than such as are merely personal. It is indeed a tribute 
of affection and esteem, which his many admiring friends wish to 
see paid to the memory of one they so justly revered. But at the 
same time it possesses an interest for the religious world at large. 
It records the life and labors of a profound theologian who, in 
advance at least of American scholars, discussed many questions 
of central significance to Christianity and the Church. They were 
questions which had as yet forced themselves on the minds of few 
thinkers in this country, and the need of solving them was hardly 
felt. It was on this account mainly that Dr. Nevin was so little 
appreciated in his day. The mind of the age was not } T et ready to 
grapple with the problems on which he bestowed such earnest 
thought. But these very questions are now demanding serious at- 
tention and are fast becoming the live questions in the religious 
world, because theolog}- is more and more ruled by the Christo- 
logical tendency, and men are seeking, as never before, to find, as 
Dr. Nevin did, the principle of Christianity in Christ Himself. 
Just at the present time, the divided state of the evangelical 
Churches is almost universally deplored as a great misfortune, and 



INTRODUCTION XV 

the healing of these divisions is a question that now occupies the 
mind and heart of many a devout thinker. Dr. Nevin in his day 
wrestled earnestly with this problem, and we doubt not that his 
views will in the near future be studied with interest and profit. 
Though he belonged to a denomination and taught its theology, 
yet he went fairly beyond it into the field of general theology. And 
in this view this biography possesses a value for the Church at 
large. 

Shortly after Dr. Nevin's death, at the meeting of the Alumni 
Association of Franklin and Marshall College, which was attended 
by many of his former students, a committee was appointed to 
prepare a memorial of his life and labors. After due consideration 
this work was committed into the hands of Dr. Theo. Appel, who 
is one of the oldest of the Alumni, had studied under Dr. Nevin 
in the College and Seminary at Mercersburg, had been his colleague 
for many years as Professor both at Mercersburg and at Lancaster, 
is well acquainted with his modes of thought, and possesses the 
requisite qualifications for a work of this character. At the next 
annual meeting of the Alumni Association in 1887, the selection 
made by the Committee was approved; and with this kind of moral 
support, together with the advice of Dr. ScharT, Dr. Appel consent- 
ed to undertake the task, which he found to be one of more than 
ordinary difficulty, requiring the careful examination of original 
sources, with much study and thought. The result of his arduous 
labors is now laid before the public, with the hope that it may meet 
with a generous reception and contribute to a better knowledge of 
one whose life has been a benediction to the world. 

FREDERICK A. GAST, D. D. 
Lancaster, Pa., Dec. 4, 1889. 



CONTENTS 

Dedication.— Introduction. — Table of Contents . . 1-24: 

I_THE NEVIN FAMILY 

Chapter I. — Scotch Ancestors. — The Williamsons. — A Patriot. — Daniel and 
Margaret Nevin. — Their Descendants. — Captain David Kevin. — His 
Family. — John Nevin. — An Educated Farmer. — His Wife Martha. — 
Their Sons and Daughters 25-28 

II— EARLY YOUTH FROM 1803-181? 

Chapter II. — "My Own Life." — Birth. — Religious Training. — Educational 
Religion. — The Catechetical System. — Church Life. — The Old Reformed 
Faith. — Dr. Moody. — Changes. — Preparation for College. — A Poem on 
the Middle Spring Meeting House 29-34 

III— AT SCHENECTADY FROM 1817-1821 

Chapter III. — Starts for Schnectady, N. Y. — Dr. Hugh Williamson. — En- 
ters Union College.— The Youngest in His Class. — College Life. — A New 
Phase of Religion. — Unchurchly. — A Revival Breaks Out. — Religious 
Experience. — Joins the Church. — Graduates with Honor. — The Revival 
System. — Criticisms. — Returns Home, a Bankrupt in Health.— Dyspep- 
sia Under Its Worst Form ^ . . . . 35-39 

IV— AT HOME FROM 1821-1823 

Chapter IV. — A Valetudinarian. — A Thorn in the Flesh. — Morbid Piety.— 
Conflict Between the Old and the New. — Confusion of Mind. — A Tumul- 
tuating Chaos. — Diversions. — Botany. — A Debating Club. — Orderly Ser- 
geant. — Hesitation and Doubt. — In a Fog. — Chooses Theology. — Goes 
to the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J 40-46 

V— AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 

Chapter V.— In a Quiet Harbor. — Pleasant Impressions. — The Professors.. 
— The Old Dualism Not Yet Resolved. — Strong Cries and Tears. — The 
Two Systems. — Puritan vs. Reformed. — Distaste for the Hebrew. — Good 
Advice. — Masters the Hebrew. — The Best Hebrew Scholar in his Class. 
— A Determining Influence. — Still at Sea. — A Father's Sensible Letters. 
— Fills Dr. Hodge's Chair for Two Years. — A More Cheerful Life. — 
Exercises on Horseback. — Writes His Biblical Antiquities — A Valuable 
Work. — Returns Home 47-54 

VI— AT HOME FROM 1828-1830 

Chapter VI. — Licensed to Preach. — Dr. Herron and the Western Theologi- 
cal Seminary at Allegheny, Pa. — Selected to be One of its Professors. — 

1* 



XV111 CONTENTS 

An Interim. — Studies Political Economy.— Begins to Preach. — Method 
and Style. — An Humble Opinion of His Sermons. — Much of a Botch. — 
The Father's Approval. — Religious Zeal. — Family Worship.— The Tem- 
perance Cause. — Not the Right Man. — An Incident. — The Father's 
Death. — The Shadow of a Great Sorrow. — A Beautiful Testimony. — 
Removes to Allegheny, Pa 55-61 

VII— AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 

Chapter VII. — The Western Seminary. — A New Enterprise. — Its Feeble 
Beginnings. — Colleagues, Dr. Halsey and Elliott. — Hard Work. — Finds 
a Pleasant Home with Dr. Herron, his Father's Friend. — Marries Miss 
Martha Jenkins. — The Jenkins Family. — A Wise Choice. — Sons and 
Daughters. — Ordained to the Ministry. — An Evangelist. — Writes for the 
Press. — Sermons and other Publications 62-67 

Chapter VIII. — Editor of the Friend, a Christian Monthly. — Its High 
Tone. — Its Narrow Stand-point. — Realistic and Reformatory. — De- 
nounces Intemperance and other Sins. — Attacks Slavery. — A Tempest 
of Abuse. — The Friend Comes to Grief. — Self-Defense. — A Mild Form 
of Abolitionism. — The Valedictory. — A Parthian Arrow. — A Solemn 
Warning. — Justification in 1861. — The Intolerance of the Times. — A 
Curious Illustration , 68-76 

Chapter IX. — The Presbyterian Schism. — A Via Media. — A Declaration 
Put on Record. — Conscientiousness. — Dogmatic Slumbers. — Dr. Augus- 
tus Neander. — His Magic Wand. — His Oeist des Tertullians. — His 
Church History. — The Church Fathers. — Old Heretics. — Neander's Mer- 
its and Defects. — An Historical Awakening. — The Value of History. — 
Self-Criticisms. — Christological Defects. — The Apostles' Creed. — Other 
Defects. — Remarks. — Reminiscences 75-91 

Chapter X. — The German Reformed Church. — A Vacant Chair in its 
Theological Seminary. — Rev. S. R. Fisher. — A Daring Inspiration. — 
The Synod of Chambersburg. — Dr. Nevin's Unanimous Election. — His 
Letter of Acceptance of the Call. — Very Satisfactory. — Removes to Mer- 
cersburg, Pa , 92-99 

VIII— AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 

Chapter XI. — First Impressions of Dr. Rauch. — Rauch's Psychology. — 
Princeton Review. — Dr. Nevin's Review of the Work 100-107 

Chapter XII. — Inaugural Address. — The Christian Ministry. — Its Dignity 
and Power. — The German Character. — The German Churches. — More 
Laborers 108-116 

Chapter XIII.— Address on Party Spirit.— The Nature, the Evil and the 
Cure of Party Spirit 117-125 

Chapter XIV. — An Excursion. — Eastern Pennsylvania. — American-Ger- 
mans.— Their Country.— A Promising Field 126-132 

Chapter XV.— The Synod of Greencastle.— The Centennial Celebration 
Inaugurated.— Its Happy Termination.— The Centennial Hymn. 133-137 

Chapter XVI.— The Death of Dr. Rauch.— A Sketch of His Life.— Eulo- 
gium by Dr. Nevin 138-144 

Chapter XVII.— Articles on the Heidelberg Catechism.— Its History and 
Genius 144-156 

Chapter XVIII.— A Tract for the Times.— The Anxious Bench Controversy. 
—Its Beginning, Progress and Termination 157-177 

Chapter XIX. — An Address on the German Language. — Its Excellence, Its 



CONTENTS XIX 

Fulness, Expansiveness, Depth, Force, Flexibility, and Value to the Stu- 
dent and Scholar 178-197 

Chapter XX. — The German Professorship. — Dr. Krummacher Elected but 
Declines the Call. — Dr. Schaff Accepts. — His Reception. —Inaugural Ad- 
dress. — The Principle of Protestantism 198-205 

Chapter XXI. — Theses for the Time — The Church in General. — The Refor- 
mation.— The Present State of the Church 206-216 

Chapter XXII. — Dr. Nevin's Sermon on Catholic Unity. — The Nature and 
Constitution of the Christian Church. — The Duty of Christians in Re- 
gard to Its Unity . 217-226 

IX— AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 

Chapter XXIII. — The Protestant Banner. — Dr. Joseph F. Berg. — His First 
Attack. — The Reply. — Articles on Pseudo- Protestantism. — The Lord's 
Supper. — The Roman Catholic Church. — Religious Radicalism . 227-241 

Chapter XXIV. — The Synod of York. — The Professors Arraigned. — 
Charges Not Sustained by the Synod. — A Just Decision. — Controversies 
Begin, Extending Over Many Years 242-250 

Chapter XXV. —The Principle of Protestantism Reviewed by the Princeton 
Repertory and the Biblical Repository. — Professor Taylor Lewis. — The 
Flight of Time, a Poem 251-264 

Chapter XXVI. — The Mystical Presence by Dr. Nevin Appears. — A Review 
of it by Dr. Ebrard 266-279 

Chapter XXVII.— Reply to Dr. Hodge's Review of the Mystical Presence. 
—Its Significance.— Mutual Respect 280-298 

Chapter XXVIII. — The Mercersburg Revieio Founded. --Its History. — Ar- 
ticles Contributed by Dr. Nevin. — The Lutheran Confession . . 299-309 

Chapter XXIX. — The Anglican Crisis. — Its Significance. — Its Defects — 
High Church and Low Church Criticised 310-320 

Chapter XXX. — Brownson's Review. — The Error of the Roman Catholic 
Theory of the Church 321-337 

Chapter XXXI. — Early Christianity. — False Theories of the Church, An- 
glican and Puritan. — Cyprian. — The Theory of Historical Development. 
—Church Question Not Yet Solved 338-368 

Chapter XXXII. — True Catholicity. — Organic not Abstract . . . 369-395 

Chapter XXXIII. — Dr. Berg's Last Words. — A Fanatical and Tyrannical 
School. — Severe Language. — ^elf-Defence. — Dr. Berg's Coadjutors, Dr. 
Proudfit and the Christian Intelligencer. — The So Called Dutch Cru- 
sade.— A Better Feeling 396-409 

Chapter XXXIV. — Two Extremes. — Romanizing Tendencies. — A Just Es- 
timate of Dr. Nevin by Dr. Schaff 410-417 

Chapter XXXV. — Dr. Nevin as Professor in the Seminary. — His Method 
of Teaching Theology. — Final Resignation. — An Affecting Scene in the 
Synod at Lancaster in 1851 — As President of Marshall College. — Pater- 
nal Government. — The College Rallies. — Good Management. — True 
Education. — Discipline. — A Surprise. — A Mistake. — The Correction. — 
Good Results. — A Bright and Affectionate Student Saved. . . . 418-431 

Chapter XXXVI. — The College in Financial Embarrassment. — Franklin 
College at Lancaster. — Consolidation with Marshall. — Difficulties Sur- 
mounted in the Board at Chambersburg, in the Legislature at Harris- 
burg, and at Lancaster. — An Election and a Close Vote. — Dr. Nevin 
Teaches Mathematics at Mercersburg. — Dr. Bucher as Agent for the 



XX CONTENTS 

College. — His Perseverance and Success. — Farewell Words at Mercers- 
burg. — The New Faculty Organized at Lancaster. — Dr. Nevin and Dr. 
Schaff Decline the Presidency. — Dr. E. Y. Gerhart Becomes President of 
Franklin and Marshall College. — Prof. Adolphus L. Koeppen. . 432-442 

X— IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 

Chapter XXXVII. — The Formal Opening of the College at Lancaster. — 
Dr. Nevin' s Address. — Pennsylvania, the Sleeping Giant. — Anglo-Ger- 
man Education. — Anglo-Germanism. — Lancaster City and County. — 
Commencement at Lancaster. — The Baccalaureate Address. — Man's 
True Destiny ; 443-461 

Chapter XXXVIII.— The Church Year.— Nature, Time and Man.— The 
Pagan Year.— The Jewish Year.— The Christian Year 462-480 

Chapter XXXIX. — The Liturgical Movement. — The Classis of East Penn- 
. sylvania in 1847. — The Synod of Hagerstown in 1848. — The Synod of Nor- 
ristown in 1849. — The Liturgical Committee Appointed. — Dr. Nevin 
Chairman. — His Views of a Liturgy — Dr. Schaff Chairman in 1851. — His 
Report at the Synod of Baltimore in 1852. — The Provisional Liturgy Ap- 
pears in 1857. — Dr. Schaff's Remarks in Regard to it. — Dr. Nevin's His- 
torical Account of its Progress and Completion. — The Liturgical Move- 
ment in the West. — The Synod of Chambersburg in 1862. — The General 
Synod in 1863 .481-493 

Chapter XL. — A Revision of the Liturgy Ordered. — The Revised Liturgy, 
or the Order of Worship Appears in 1866. — The Synod of York, 1866, 
Sustains the Order of Worship. — The Era of Liturgical Controversy Be- 
gins. — The General Synod at Dayton in 1866. — Dr. Nevin's Speech. — A 
Long Discussion. — The Optional Use of the Revised Liturgy Granted. — 
A Moral Victory. — Dr. Nevin's View of Its Significance. — His Review of 
the Liturgical Situation. — His Vindication of the Revised Liturgy, 
Historical and Theological, a Tract for the Times. — The General Synod 
at Philadelphia in 1869. — The Liturgy Endorsed. — Unpleasant Discus- 
sions. — Myerstown Convention. — Good aud Evil Results. — General Synod 
at Lancaster, Pa., in 1878. — Peace Measures Initiated and a Happy Meet- 
ing. — Peace Commissioners Appointed. — Their Report Adopted in 1881. 
— The Directory of Worship Officially Announced by the General Synod 
in 1887— Era of Peace 494-514 

Chapter XLL— Address on the Wonderful Nature of Man.— The Structure 
of the World.— Its Prophecy of Man. — Its Head and Meaning. — The Hu- 
man Body. — Consciousness. — The Moral World. — Memory. — The Rea- 
son.— The Will.— The Presence of Law.— Conscience 515-528 

Chapter XLII— Dr. Bushnell on Nature and the Supernatural.— Friendly 
Criticisms by Dr. Nevin. — The Constitution of the World, Physical and 
Moral. — An Organic Unity in Christ. — Sin. — Redemption. — The Incarna- 
tion.— Revelation.— A Personal Satan.— A Defective Christology.— The 
Continuance of Miracles. — Unchurchliness. — Want of Faith . . 529-550 

Chapter XLIII.— Thoughts on the Church.— The True Sense of the 
Church Question.— The Idea of the Church.— What is the Church ?— 
The Creed.— Faith in the Church.— The Unchurchly Scheme.— The 
Church Historical.— Antichrist.— Peter's Faith 551-565 

Chapter XLIV. — Hodge's Commentary on the Ephesians, Reviewed from 
the Stand-point of the Church. — Arminianism. — Calvinism. — Metaphys- 
ical Predestination.— The Scriptural Idea of Election.— St. Paul.— St. 
Peter.— Dualistic Theory of the Church.— The Church an Organism.— 
Its Objective Life.— Noah's Ark.— The Incarnation 566-589 

Chapter XLV. — Lectures on History. — Biography. — National History. — 
Universal History.— Objective and Subjective.— A Unity or Totality.— 



CONTENTS XXI 

The Idea of World History.— Chronologically and Synchronologically 
Considered. — Philosophy of History. — The True Sense of History. — 
Christianity.— Christ.— Learning —Faith. — Imagination. — Ex-President 
Buchanan. — He Joins the Church. — The Organization of the College 
Congregation in 1865 590-604 

Chapter XLVI. — Third Centennial of the Adoption of the Heidelberg 
Catechism in 1863. — General Convention in Philadelphia from January 
17th to January 24th. — Papers from German and American Divines Read 
at the Convention. — The Tercentenary Monument. — Dr. Nevin's Sermon, 
on the Undying Life in Christ. — The Same Yesterday, To-day, and 
Forever. — Christ and the World. — Christ in Humanity and History. — 
Christ the Absolute Fountain of all Truth and Reason. — Practical Re- 
marks 605-627 

Chapter XLVII. — Progress of the College at Lancaster. —Elder Henry 
Leonard. — The Return of Peace. — Its Animating Influence. — The 
Friends of the College Rally in 1866. — The Movement to Increase the 
Endowment. — Enthusiasm. — Reorganization of the Faculty. — Dr. Kevin 
Elected President of the College. — Hon. John W. Kil linger. — Professor 
Thomas C, Porter. — Dr. Nevin's Letter of Acceptance. — Commence- 
ment Address. — A Survey of the Situation. — The Animating Features 
and Signs of the Times. — The Greatness of Our Country. — Its World- 
Historical Character. — Its Future. — A New Era in History and the 
Church. — Our Danger, Our Duty, and Our Responsibilities . . 628-654 

Chapter XLVIII. — The Endowment Movement. — Dr. B. C. Wolff as Agent. 
— His Success. — Mr. Lewis Audenried. — His Generous Bequest. — An 
Excursus. — The Hon. William J. Baer. — The Willie] m Family.— Its 
History. — Kinderlehre. — Benjamin and Peter. — A New Church. — The 
Laying of the Corner-stone. — The Consecration. — Rev. A. B. Koplin. — 
His Fidelity. — The Wilhelm Estate Bequeathed to the College and Sem- 
inary. — A Legal Obstruction. — A Critical Situation.— Court of Equity. 
— A Compromise. — The Legacy Saved.— Herman L. Baer, Esq., Hon. 
A. H. Coffroth, Judge Jeremiah S. Black, Hon. John Cessna, Hon. 
Thos. E. Franklin, and George F. Baer, Esq. — Alumni Professorship. — 
Harbaugh Hall. — Rev. C. U. Heilmau as Agent. — The Academy Build- 
ing. — Another Huge Pile of Bricks. — Deficits in the Treasury. — Resig- 
nation of Dr. Nevin. — He Goes Into Retirement. — His Influence Con- 
tinues to be Felt. — The College Continues to Prosper 655-666 

Chapter XLIX. — Lectures on ^Esthetics. — The Idea of Beauty. — Objective 
Beauty. — The Sublime in Time, Space, and in Dynamics or Power. — 
The Subjective Sublime in the Will, — Good and Bad. — The Subjective 
Apprehension of the Sublime. — The Comic.' — The Burlesque, Wit, 
Humor, and the Naive. — Nature Beauty. — The Phantasy. — The Fine 
Arts 667-685 

Chapter L. — Lectures on Philosophical Ethics. — Lemmata or Postulates, 
Derived From Metaphysics, Psychology, and Practical Philosophy. — 
The True, the Beautiful and the Good. — Ethical Ideas. — The Idea of 
Right. — Its Actualization. — The Idea of Social Integration. — The Idea of 
Religion, as the Bond of the Two Other Ideas. —The Freedom of the 
Will.— The Natural Will.— Its Transition to a Higher Stage of Char- 
acter. — The Supreme Good in the Psychological and Ethical Sense. — 
Character.— Ethical Character. — Virtue. — Its Relation to Duty and the 
Good. — Its Contents. — As an Endowment. — The Conception of Duty. — 
Its Relation to Virtue. — Duties to Ourselves. — Duties to Others. — Col- 
lision of Duties. — The Good. — The Development of the Idea of Right. — 
Actualization of the Idea of Social Integration. — The Actualization of 
the Idea of Religion. — Its Relation to Morality. — Its Embodiment in the 
Church. — The Necessity of Christianity. — The God-Man in Christ. — 
Ethics, the Handmaid of Christianity 686-700 



Xxii CONTENTS 

Chapter LI. — Self-criticism in 1870. — Theological Progress. — German Liter- 
ature. — The Rationalistic Element. — Abstract Supernatural ism. — An- 
dover. — Knapp. — Testimony of the Spirit. — Hermeneutical Enlargement. 
— Ernesti. — Grammatico-Historical Interpretation. — Two Revelations, 
The Outward Word and the Interior Sense. — The Human and the Di- 
vine in Scripture. — Luther and the Bible. — The Christological Method. — 
Herder, Lowth and Michselis. — The Theanthropic Sense. — Pia Desideria. 
— Rationalist Supernaturalism, in Germany and This Country. — Person- 
al Religion. — Francke, Bengel, Zinzendorf, Spener, and the Wesleys. — 
Henry Scougal. — Shaw's Immanuel.-— Mysticism. — De Imitatione Christi. 
— Illustrations of the Interior Sense of Scripture. — Seventieth Birth-Day. 
A Presentation. —An Historical Response. — Mutual Kind Wishes. — The 
Reformed Synod —Many Disciples 701-727 

Chapter LII. — Our Relations to Germany. — Charge of Germanizing. — An 
Opposite Charge. — Dr. Dorner's Favorable Opinion of the Liturgy. — 
His Exceptions to its View of Ordination and the Christian Ministry. — 
Respect for German Learning. — Its Christological Tendency. — Its De- 
fects. — Review of Dorner's History of Protestant Theology. — Its Strength 
and Its Weakness. — Answer to Dr. Dorner 728-739 

XII— IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 

Chapter LIII. — Mystical Tendency. — Bereavements. — Emanual Sweden- 
borg and Professor Thiersch. — Moehlei's and Gorres's View of Sweden- 
borg. — Dr. Nevin's View.— Articles in the Reformed Church Review. — The- 
osophy. — A Healthy Reaction to Intellectualism. — Last Articles for the 
Review. — The Interior Sense 740-749 

Chapter LIV. — Reminiscences. — Last Sermons. —Spiritual Enlargement. — 
Ceases to Preach and to Write. — Looking for the Coming of Christ. — 
Failing Eye-sight. — Conversation with a Young Friend. — Love for the 
Bible. — Memorizing the Scriptures. — The World an Ocean of Mist. — 
Ceases to Attend Divine Worship — Last Communion on Easter Sunday. 
— An Affecting Scene. — Little Children. — Ejaculatory Prayer. — A Scene 
in his Class-room. — A Tribute of Respect. — Birth-day Anniversaries. — 
Visitors. — Great Conversational Powers. — Physical Weakness. — Pre- 
monitory Symptoms. — Last Sabbath. — Death. — Funeral Service. — Ser- 
mon and Address. — At the Grave. — Memorial Services. — Commencement 
of 1886. — Endowment of the Presidency of the College. — Memorial Vol- 
ume.— Observatory. — Memorial Window. — An Elegy 740-761 

Chapter LV. — Correspondence. — Condolence. — Letter to Mr. George Be- 
sore. — Letter to Rev. Dr. John Casper Bucher— Letter t3 Mrs. Alexander 
Brown. — Notes of a Great Sermon. — Concluding Remarks. — Alphabetical 
Index 762-768 



JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN 



THE LIFE AND WORK 



OF- 



JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN 



I-THE NEVIN FAMILY 



CHAPTER I 



"^TEYIN, or its equivalent MacNevin, is an historical name in 
-L-^i the annals of Scotland and Ireland. Two of the race came 
to New York from the north of Ireland about the middle of the 
last century. One of them settled in the state of New York, along 
the Hudson, where his descendants at the present time are numer- 
ous and respectable. Daniel, his younger brother, continued his 
journe} 7 into Pennsylvania, and cast in his lot with what are some- 
times called the Scotch-Irish settlers, in the Cumberland Yalle} 7 , a 
religious and intelligent class of people, who, like himself, had fled 
from oppression in the same part of Ireland. 

Here in the course of time he married a widow, who had been the 
wife of Mr. Reynolds, from whom descended a family of children 
that reflected honor on their parents. Her maiden name was Mar- 
garet Williamson, a lady of superior natural intelligence, and of 
decided force of character. She was a sister of Hugh Williamson^ 
M.D., LL.D., who was on the medical staff during the Revolution,, 
a member of the Continental Congress, one of the framers of the 
Constitution of the United States, and otherwise distinguished, both 
during and after the war, as a patriot and an eminent American citi- 
zen. He was a writer of some distinction, the author of a History 
of North Carolina and other publications. The Williamsons were 
of English origin, although the family had a tradition, whether true 
or not, based on its coat of arms, and other considerations, that they 
were in the line of descent from the celebrated Scottish chieftain, 
2 (25) 



26 THE NEVIN FAMILY [DlV. I 

William Wallace, whose daughter, or near relative, married a Will- 
iamson. They came, however, from England, where one of the 
family was an Episcopal clergyman, and is said to be honorably rep- 
resented at the present day by his descendants in the third and 
fourth generation. 

Daniel and Margaret Nevin lived on a farm near the present vil- 
lage of Orrstown, in Franklin county, Pa., in full view of the North 
Mountain. They were blessed with three daughters and two sons ; 
and through them, with numerous descendants who have reflected 
credit on their name as ministers, law3 T ers, doctors, editors, authors, 
or as successful business men. The daughters of Daniel Nevin 
were married into families of good standing : Sarah to Daniel Hen- 
derson; Elizabeth to John Pomeiw; Mary to Cook and 

McClay. Their sons were John and David, the former a 

farmer, the latter a merchant. Their children and children's children 
came to be much esteemed in their respective communities. Major 
David Nevin established himself at Shippensburg as a successful 
merchant and business man. Clear-headed and progressive in his 
tendencies, he added farm to farm during his lifetime, and being 
pleasant in his manners and on the popular side in politics, he was 
alwaj^s elected to posts of honor when he received the nomination. 
The immense crowd which attended his funeral showed the high 
estimation in which he was held by the community! He had six 
sons and five daughters, two of the latter having died at an early 
age: Caroline, married to Wm. Rankin, M.D.; Jane M., to Charles 

M. Rejmolds, merchant; Mary, to Tustin; Joseph P. and 

Samuel W., merchants; William Wallace, M.D.; David Robert Bruce, 
law}^er; and Edwin Heniy and Alfred, the remaining sons, who be- 
came eloquent divines in the Presbyterian Church, well-known doc- 
tors of divinity, popular writers, and the authors of a number of 
meritorious books or pamphlets on moral and religious subjects. 

It was thought that John, the older brother of David, and father 
of John Williamson, as he was of a quiet and studious disposition, 
should receive a collegiate education, and perhaps enter one of the 
learned professions. Accordingly he was sent to Dickinson Col- 
lege at Carlisle, Pa,, then under the presidency of Dr. Nisbet, a dis- 
tinguished Scotch divine, where he graduated in 1795. 

One of his class-mates was Roger B. Taney, afterwards Chief 
Justice of the United States, who was his successful competitor at 
graduation in carrying off the highest prize for scholarship, in a 
class of twenty-four members. As this nice point of honor was de- 
cided by a majority of the class, and perhaps, at times, by their 



Chap. I] john and margaret nevin 27 

preferences, his mere selection, as one out of two competitors, was 
an evidence of his high standing as a scholar among his fellow stu- 
dents. Young Nevin took as the theme of his graduating speech 
the " Sin of Slavery," with which his successful rival, Mr. Taney, 
may not have altogether sympathized at the time. After his gradu- 
ation he was somewhat at a loss to know what his proper calling in 
life was to be; but at length, either from natural timidity or love 
of rural pursuit, he chose the noble profession of farming ; married 
Martha McCracken, a woman of decided character, adorned with 
many virtues ; and settled in a home of his own, on Herron's Branch, 
near Shippensburg, and subsequently on Keasey's Run, not far from 
the neighboring village of Strasburg. Thus he became what is some- 
times called a " Latin Farmer," one who could teach his sons 
Latin, Greek, or other branches of a higher education in his own 
family. Private life was preferred to a public one, but he stood in 
such high estimation among his fellow citizens for his intelligence 
and sterling integrity, that they concluded to send him to Congress 
as their representative, which, it was said, was frustrated only by 
his death in 1829. He became a Trustee of Dickinson College, his 
Alma Mater, in 1827, which was probably the only public office he 
ever filled. 

He seemed to be naturally unaggressive, apparently too timid to 
make a praj^er of his own in public ; but it was his highest ambition 
that his sons should be trained for posts of honor and usefulness in 
their day — perhaps to supplement, as it were, his own backward- 
ness in the noisy, busy world. As for himself, with his love for 
nature, he chose to pursue his course along life's sequestered vale, 
apart from its contentions, in congenial rural pursuits. He was a 
diligent reader of the best authors, and an attractive conversation- 
alist. His meagre supply of books was considerably enlarged when 
his uncle, Dr. Williamson, left him his library at his death in 1819. 
It was a compliment to him as one who was most likely to appre- 
ciate such a gift. Occasional^ his quiet life in the country was re- 
lieved of its monotony b} T summer visits from his uncles, Dr. Hugh 
Williamson of New York, or Captain John Williamson, a wealthy 
merchant of Charleston, South Carolina. Both were gentlemen 
of the old school in dress and manners, and arrested considerable 
attention among the country people daring their visits. Much more 
of a sensation, however, was produced on such occasions among the 
nephews and nieces of the Nevin family, who usually received hand- 
some gifts or keepsakes from their uncles, especially from the wealthy 
merchant from the South. The latter at his decease bequeathed to 



28 THE NEVIN FAMILY [DlY. I 

the Nevins in Pennsylvania a large tract of land in the West, and 
John, with one of his nephews, went out to look after it and secure 
it for the family. The trip, which was successful, was one of the 
few that took him any distance from his home. At Nashville he 
called to pay his compliments to General Andrew Jackson, the 
"idol of the people" in those days, and was entertained by him in 
generous st} T le at The Hermitage ; no doubt because he came from 
Pennsylvania and was a good representative of its patriotic people. 
John Nevin and his wife, Martha, had six sons and three daugh- 
ters: Margaret, married to John K. Finley, M.D., Professor of Na- 
tural Science in Dickinson College whilst under Presbyterian con- 
trol ; Elizabeth, married to Rev. Dr. A. Blaine Brown, son of the 
distinguished Rev. Dr. Matthew Brown, and his successor as Pres- 
ident of Washington College, Washington, Pa. ; Martha Mary, de- 
ceased, married to John Irvin, Esq., merchant, and honored Elder 
in the Presb} T terian Congregation at Sewickly, Pa. ; Theodore, a 
prominent banker and prosperous business man of Pittsburgh, and 
also Elder in the Sewickly Congregation, lately deceased ; Robert, 
editor and author of ability at Pittsburgh, still living; Daniel E., 
clerg3 T man, teacher, author, and an Israelite without guile, now 
deceased; William M., Professor in Marshall, and in Franklin and 
Marshall College, from 1840 to the present } T ear 1889, poet and 
humorous writer, honored b}~ Dickinson College, his Alma Mater, 
with the title of LL.D. ; and John Williamson, the eldest in the 
family, whose life and. spirit it is the object of this volume to por- 
tray. 



II— EARLY YOUTH FROM 1803-1817 

Mt. 1-14 



CHAPTER II 



AS DR. NEVIN advanced in years and fame, he was requested, 
- from time to time, to furnish the necessary material for a 
sketch of his life, to be given to the world in some permanent form. 
In the year 18*70, therefore, he concluded to write out his biography 
in a series of articles, which were published in the Messenger, the 
organ of the Reformed Church, commencing in the month of March 
and ending in July, under the title of "My Own Life." They give 
a full account of his inner and outer life, with self-criticisms, until 
his removal from Allegheny City, Pa., to Mercersburg, Pa., in the 
spring of the year 1840. It was his intention at some future time 
to resume the thread of his history onward to the period when he 
wrote, but for various reasons the task, unfortunately, was never 
resumed, and it has devolved upon the writer to supply the public 
with the record of the remainder of his long and stirring career as 
best he can, from the material on hand. It has been deemed best, 
on the whole, to reproduce the autobiography, quoting from it when 
deemed necessary, and at other times making a liberal use of its 
language, without always informing the reader. 

John Williamson Nevin was born on Herron's Branch, near Ship- 
pensburg, Franklin county, Pa., on Sunday, February 20, 1803. 

He always regarded it as an important part of his youthful train- 
ing and worthy of note, that he spent his early days on a farm, in 
the midst of a people of plain and simple manners ; that he thus 
became familiar with the scenes and employments of country life ; 
and that he was put to all sorts of farm work, just as soon and as 
far as it was found that he could render himself useful in that way. 

He, however, thought that it was a matter of still greater ac- 
count, that he was so fortunate as to receive a healthy religious 
training from his earliest years. He was by birth and blood a 
Presbyterian ; and as his parents were both conscientious and ex- 
emplary professors of religion, he was brought up in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord, according to the ancient Presb3 T terian 

(29) 



30 EARLY YOUTH FROM 1803-1817 [DlV. II 

faith arid practice, which at the time had not undergone any mate- 
rial change from that of the forefathers in Scotland and Ireland. 
The Presbyterianisra prevalent in the Cumberland Valley at the 
beginning of the present century, was based throughout on the 
idea of covenant family religion, of church membership by a 
holy act of God in baptism ; and, following this as a logical se- 
quence, there was regular catechetical training of the young, with 
direct reference to their coming to the Lord's Table. In a word, it 
proceeded on the theory of a sacramental, educational religion, 
that belonged properly to all the national branches of the Reformed 
Church in Europe from the beginning. In this respect the Re- 
formed Churches of Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, Eng- 
land and Scotland were, when proper^ understood, all of one 
mind ; and at the time to which we here refer, this mind ruled 
the Presbyterianisrn of this country. It is true, no use was made 
of confirmation in admitting catechumens to full communion with 
the Church; but there was that which was considered to be sub- 
stantially the same thing in the way they were solemn^ admitted to 
the communion hy the Church Session. The sj-stem was churchly, 
as holding the Church, in her visible character, to be the medium of 
salvation for her baptized children, in the sense of that memorable 
declaration of Calvin, where, speaking of her as the Mother of be- 
lievers, in the fourth book of his Institutes, he says : " There is no 
other entrance into life, save as she may receive us in her womb, 
give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her 
loving care to the end." 

This was the S3 T stem of educational religion under which it was 
the good fortune of Williamson Xevin to spend the first years of 
his life, in connection with the best kind of parental care at home, 
in the Presb3 T terian Church at Middle Spring, a few miles north of 
Shippensburg. He was baptized by the Rev. Dr. Robert Cooper, 
just about the time the vacant charge passed over into the hands 
of the Rev. Dr. John Mood}', who served it for half a century with 
fidelity, success, and in primitive simplicity. The latter made man}' 
happy impressions on the mind of young Nevin, watched his career 
with paternal interest as he rose from one post of honor to another, 
and, with no unfriendly criticism, rejoiced, as he once told the writer, 
to see him so high above him in the Church of Christ. He became 
a A r enerable patriarch in Israel, honored by all who knew him; and 
Dr. Nevin, his spiritual son, who had learned so many wholesome 
lessons from him, had the pleasure of obtaining for him the doc- 
torate whilst he was President of Marshall College. It was an 



Chap. II] religious training 31 

honor well bestowed, and well deserved towards the close of a long 
and faithful ministry. 

In the course of time, however, a change came over the Presby- 
terian Church at large, which in the end brought with it corres- 
ponding changes also in the character of the old country congre- 
gation at Middle Spring. But during Dr. Kevin's childhood and 
early youth the spirit arid life of the congregation continued to be 
what they were from the beginning. Pastoral visitation was a busi- 
ness as much as preaching. The schoolmaster stood by the side of 
the pastor as the servant of the Church; the school was regarded as 
its necessary auxiliary ; and the catechism stood in honor and use 
everywhere, as the great organ or ruling power, which was to pro- 
mote a sound religious education for all classes in the congregation. 
Every Sunday evening, especially, was devoted to more or less 
catechization in the family. Children were put on simple Bible 
questions as soon as they could speak. Then came the Mother's 
Catechism, as it was called; and following this, the Assembly's 
Shorter Catechism, hard to be understood, but wholesome for 
future use. The same instruction met the young in the parochial 
school, where it was usual for the master, in those days, to examine 
his scholars once a week in the catechism. All this was a part of 
the established church system ; but it was only preparatory, in- 
tended simply to make room for its full operation in a higher form, 
when the work fell into the hands of the pastor, who regarded it 
as forming the main portion of his proper pastoral work. 

There were two modes in which such salutary church instruc- 
tion was carried forward, the practice varying from one to another 
in different years. In one year it was by the pastor visiting family 
after family and catechizing each household separately ; while, in 
another year, it would be done by bringing together whole neigh- 
borhoods before him, at some central place, in a school-house or 
some private dwelling, where, in the presence of the elder, an ex- 
amination was held in a public and solemn way. On these occa- 
sions, the children were examined first; but after them the grown 
people, all in some portion of the Larger Westminster Catechism 
previously assigned for the purpose. 

All this was in harmony with the general church life of those 
days. It was staid, systematic, grave and somewhat sombre, mak- 
ing much account of sound doctrine ; wonderfully bound to old es- 
tablished forms, and not without a large sense of the objective side 
of religion as embodied in the means of grace. There was much of 
this manifested, more particularly in the use of the holy sacraments. 



32 EARLY YOUTH FROM 1803-1817 [DlY. II 

The children of church-members were all baptized with few or no 
exceptions, and received into the Christian covenant at an early 
day as a matter that allowed of the least possible delay. Each 
communion season was a four-days-meeting, very solemn through- 
out, where all revolved around the central service of the Lord's 
Table on the Lord's Day; with a real, and not simply nominal, 
humiliation and fast, going before on Friday, in the way of special 
preparation for such a near approach into the presence of God. 

Seventy } T ears ago, this was the general order of religious life 
in all the Presb3 T terian churches in the Cumberland Valley, which, 
however, in a great measure has passed away, with much of its 
solemnity and depth of feeling. In the year 18T0, Dr. Nevin, con- 
templating the great revolution which had come to pass in a gentle 
and noiseless way, thus wrote : 

" Wonderful to think of it ! Not only Rouse's Psalms — to which 
I seem to listen still as a fond echo borne in upon nrv soul from the 
old stone church at Middle Spring — have passed away with the en- 
tire generation which sung them ; but the old catechetical system 
also is gone, and along with it, to a large extent, the general scheme 
of religion to which it belonged, and which served to hold it to- 
gether, something which it is difficult for the present generation to 
understand, or to make any proper account of whatever." 

That the statements here made in regard to the old Presbyterian 
faith are not overdrawn may be readily seen by a careful perusal of 
a work entitled, "i Book of Common Prayer, compiled from the 
authorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church as 
prepared by Calvin, Knox, Bucer and others," published by Charles 
Scribner, X. Y., 185". It is a curious fact that it made its appear- 
ance — pari passu — in the same 3'ear with the Provisional Liturg}- in 
the German Reformed Church. The one was probably the echo of 
the other — as deep calleth unto deep. 

According to tradition, Williamson Nevin when a child could 
scarcely pronounce the English language intelligibly until he was 
five or six } T ears old. But with the development of his mind there 
was a corresponding development in the use of words accurately to 
express his thoughts. An elderly German lady — the grandmother 
of Rev. John M. Titzel, D.D. — saw him as a child twelve years old, 
when he came to see his grandmother near Orrstown, and there 
heard him talk. With other women she listened to him with sur- 
prise, and wondered where he had obtained all this knowledge. 

After he had studied the elementary branches in the parochial 
school — learned whatever was to be learned there — his father took 



Chap. II] preparation for college 33 

him in hand to prepare him for college. He knew the value of a clas- 
sical education himself, and was honored for his superior intelligence. 
Observing the budding of a strong intellect in his first-born, he so 
superintended his country training, as to give it direction from the 
beginning towards a full course of college study. At an early day, 
accordingly, a Latin Grammar was placed in his hands, and the 
father himself became the tutor. The lessons were studied irrearu- 
larly, it is true, sometimes in the house and sometimes in the field, 
and there was no fixed hour or place for the sub-freshman's recita- 
tions ; but the course was full and complete, first in Latin and after- 
wards in Greek, and the drilling was thorough. In after years he 
was wont to sa}^ that it was worth more to him than all that 
he learned of these languages subsequently in passing through col- 
lege. In this kind of a preparatory school, on a farm, under the 
eye and auspices of his honored sire, and with no proctor to en- 
force obedience to fixed rules, Williamson made rapid progress in 
his studies — like Cyrus in the Cyropedia, who, according to Xeno- 
phou, studied because he loved to study. He was prepared to enter 
college when he was only a little over fourteen j^ears of age. 

But before we follow him on his way to the classic halls of his 
Alma Mater, we here supply the reader with a few reminiscences of 
the old Middle Spring Meeting House, in which he received his best 
religious impression during his early years. They are selected from 
a quaint poem, composed by his brother, Professor William M. 
Nevin, after a pilgrimage to the sacred spot during the year 184*7. 

Welcome to me once more this lone church-yard, 
To which this June's bright morn have strolled my feet ! 
Ah ! from the village left still hitherward 
Outdrawn am I that good old church to greet ; 
And these sad graves, to pay them homage meet, 
What times I come back to this neighborhood, 
Long whiles between, where erst my boyhood sweet 
Was sped ; here o'er its joys despoiled to brood. 
But, though it bringeth dole the while, it doth me good. 

That old stone church ! Hid in these oaks apart 
I hoped Improvement ne'er would it invade; 
But only Time, with his slow, hallowing art, 
Would touch it, year by } r ear, with softer shade, 
And crack its walls no more, but, interlaid, 
Mend them with moss. Its ancient sombre cast 
To me is dearer than all art displayed 
*In modern churches, which, by their contrast, 
Make this to stand forlorn, held in the solemn past. 



34 EARLY YOUTH FROM 1803-1817 [DlY. II 

For me of reverence is that church possessed, 
For in my childhood's dawn was I conveyed 
Within its dome, when was high HeaA^en addressed, 
Me to renew, and solemn vows were made, 
And lymph was sprent, and holy hands were laid, 
And on me was imposed a Christian's name ; 
And when through youth's gay wildering paths I strayed, 
What wholesome truths, what heavenly counsels came ! 
The birthright there enfeoffed, oh, may I never shame ! 

Its pews of pine obdurate, upright, tall, 
Its gallery mounted high, three sides around, 
Its pulpit goblet-formed, far up the wall, 
The sounding-board above with acorn crowned, 
And Rouse's Psalms which erst therein did sound 
To old fugue tunes, to some the thoughts might raise 
Of folk forlorn that certes there were found. 
Ah, no ! I wot in those enchanting days 
There beauty beamed, there swelled the richest notes of praise. 

Out from that pulpit's bight, deep browed and grave, 
The man of God ensconced, half-bust, was shown. 
Weighty and wise he did ne thump nor rave, 
Ts or lead his folk upwrought to smile nor moan. 
By him slow-cast the seeds of truth were sown, 
Which, falling on good soil, took lasting hold, 
Not springing eftsoons, then to wilt ere grown, 
But in long time their fruits increased were told ; 
Some thirt3 T , sixty some, and some a hundred fold. 



Here were they gathered every good Lord's Day 
From town, from hamlet, and from farm afar. 
Their worldly cares at home now left to stay, 
Was nothing here their pious thoughts to mar ; 
The time, the place all follies did debar ; 
The Church their only care ; yet, sooth the State 
Did some mislead, who, nothing loth to spar, 
Ev'n here brought in untimeous debate 
Their party's cause to uphold, and speed their candidate. 



Now, by this locust bowing down the knee 
As would he wish here laid, thus let me pray ; 
Kind Saviour, with Thy spirit strengthen me, 
And play-feres strown, help us to walk the way 
Our fathers trode, and never from it stray ; 
And when at length Thou com'st, to take Thine own, 
Grant that with them we gathered be that day. 
All saved and blessed, forever round Thy throne, 
With them to live, and love, and worship Thee alone. 



Ill— AT SCHENECTADY FROM 1817-1821 

Mb. 14-18 



CHAPTER III 



A FTER Williamson Nevin had fairly mastered the rudiments 
-£-*- of the ancient languages with corresponding English 
branches, it was supposed that, young as he was, the time had ar- 
rived for him to go to college. His uncle, Captain John William- 
son, after whom he was named, assumed the charge of his educa- 
tion, and by the advice of his brother, who was still living at 
New York, in the fall of the year 1817 he was sent to Union Col- 
lege, Schenectady, N. Y., which was then at the zenith of its pros- 
perity under the presidency of the celebrated Dr. Eliphalet Nott. 
The place seemed to be far awa}^ at that time ; and although the 
first steamboats were running on the North River, it took in fact 
as much time to reach it as it now requires for an overland trip to 
California. On his way he met for the last time his patriarchal 
kinsman, Dr. Hugh Williamson, of revolutionary fame, and was 
sufficiently overpowered by his venerable and commanding pres- 
ence. His only word of counsel to him was : " Take care, my boy, 
that you do not learn to smoke ; for smoking will lead you to 
drinking, and that is the end of all that is good." It is scarcely 
necessary to sa}'- that his namesake remembered his advice, and 
kept himself aloof from smoking, and all use of tobacco or liquor. 
But this required no special effort on his part, as he no doubt be- 
lieved with King James in his famous " Counterblast " to tobacco, 
that there was no use "in men's making chimneys of their mouths." 

Union College had at this time a better reputation than it de- 
served. Dr. Nott himself took only a small part in its actual work 
of instruction, and this never amounted to much more than an 
empty form. The institution lived largely on the outside credit of 
his name. It was a mistake that young Nevin was sent to college 
at such an early age. He was the youngest and the smallest stu- 
dent in his class, and a mere unfledged boy, it might be said, to the 
end of his college course. With the natural timidity, inherited 
from his father, he could hardly connect two thoughts together 

(35) 



36 AT SCHENECTADY FROM 1817-1821 . [DlV. Ill 

when he arose to speak in the Literary Society, and was surprised 
at the flow of words and ideas that came from William Henry 
Seward, several classes in advance of him, who did not seem to 
know when it was time for him to take his seat. Little did Will- 
iamson imagine at this time that probably as many winged words 
should go forth from his tongue and pen to the world as from the 
embryo statesman of Utica, N. Y. Although a retiring, diffident 
youth, he formed some valuable friendships with fellow-students 
which continued during his life time. Among others he met with 
Taylor Lewis, who in his day came to occupy a deservedly high 
position in the walks of American literature. They were differ- 
ently constituted, but both possessed a deep reverence for what 
was profound and spiritual, and became congenial friends, whom 
no difference of opinion could separate as the years rolled around. 

The young student from Pennsylvania entered the Freshman 
Class, studied hard, maintained a respectable standing, and al- 
though his studies were at times interrupted by ill health, he grad- 
uated with honor in the year 1821. But his health broke down, 
and when he returned to his home he became a burden to himself 
and to all around, as he says, through a long course of dyspeptic 
suffering, on which he afterwards was accustomed to look back "as 
a sort of horrible nightmare, covering with gloom the best season 
of his youth." 

His life at college was not uneventful. The religious experience 
through which he then passed was to him instructive, and indi- 
rectly, at least, exerted a salutary influence on his entire subse- 
quent career. But favorable, as it may have been in some respects, 
yet in others, as he affirmed when his judgment was matured, it 
was decidedly unfavorable. Union College was organized on the 
principle of representing the collective Christianity of the so-called 
evangelical denominations, and as a consequence, it proceeded, 
throughout, practically, on the idea that the relation of religious to 
secular education is something abstract and outward only — the two 
spheres having nothing to do with each other in fact, except as 
mutual complemental sides, in the end, of what should be con- 
sidered a right kind of general human culture. This is a common 
delusion, by which it is imagined so widely, that the school should 
be divorced from the Church, and that faith is of no account for 
learning and science. There was religion in the college so far as 
morning and evening prayers went, and the students were required 
to attend the different churches in town on Sunday. But there 
was no real church life, as such, in the institution. It seemed to 



Chap. Ill] a new phase of religion 37 

be only for the purpose of apprenticing its pupils in the different 
departments of a common academical knowledge, and not at all in 
any comprehensive sense for bringing them forward in the disci- 
pline of a true Christian life. This was something that was left 
to outside appliances altogether, more or less sporadic and irregu- 
lar, and was in no way brought into the educational economy of 
the college itself, as its all pervading spirit and soul. 

All this involved serious consequences, as a matter of course, al- 
though not clearly understood at the time by an ingenuous youth, 
trained in the old Reformed faith under its Presbyterian form, into 
which he had been baptized at Middle Spring. It was his first 
contact with the genius of New England Puritanism as a new 
phasis of religion. This was something very plausible, and with 
his limited experience he was not in a condition to withstand the 
shock. For him it amounted to a serious disturbance of his whole 
previous life, if not a complete breaking up of its order. He had 
come to college as a boy of strongly pious dispositions and exem- 
plary religious habits, pious without exactly knowing it, never 
doubting that he was in some way a Christian, although, unfor- 
tunately, as he says, he had not as yet made a public profession of 
religion. But now one of the first lessons inculcated on him by 
this unchurchly system was that all this must pass for nothing, and 
that he must learn to look upon himself as an outcast from the 
family and kingdom of God — in the gall of bitterness and the bonds 
of iniquity — before he could get into either in the right way. 

Such, he says, especially, was the instruction he received from 
others around him, when a "revival of religion," as it was called, 
broke out among the students, and brought the instruction which 
he had received to a practical application. It took place in close 
connection with an extended system of religious excitement, which . 
the celebrated Mr. Nettleton was then carrying on in that region 
of country. To the. minds of man3 r , and to that of the student 
from Pennsylvania, he was the impersonation of the Apostle Paul. 
The system appeared under its best character, it will be freely ad- 
mitted, under his direction, and was altogether different from what 
it afterwards became in the hands of such men as Finney and Gal- 
lagher, when Mr. Nettleton himself withdrew from it his counten- 
ance. The awakening in the college was no part of its proper 
order. Dr. Nott had nothing to do with it ; it formed in fact a 
sort of temporary outside episode, conducted by the Professor of 
Mathematics, an adroit manager, and certain "pious students" 
previously Christianized by the working of the machine, who now, 



38 AT SCHENECTADY FROM 1S17-1821 [DlY. Ill 

after such drilling and manipulation, were supposed to be compe- 
tent to assist him in bringing s.ouls to their new birth. 

Along with others Williamson Xevin came into their hands in 
the anxious meetings and underwent "the torture of their mechani- 
cal counsel and talks," as he expresses it in his autobiography. 
One after another, however, of " the anxious " obtained hope, each 
new case, as it were, stimulating another, and finally, among the 
last, he struggled into something of the sort himself, with a feeble, 
trembling sense of comfort, which his spiritual advisers then had 
no difficulty in accepting as all that the case required. In this way 
he was converted, as he imagined, and brought into the church as if 
he had been altogether out of it before, about the close of the 
seventeenth j T ear of his age. His conversion he thought was not 
full}- up to his own idea at the time of what such a change ought 
to be; but it was as earnest and thorough, no doubt, as that of any 
of his fellow-students — certainly more solid and fruitful than that 
of the professional conductor of this revival, who subsequently 
showed, sad to say, how deficient his own, unfortunately, was. 

Such a grave and thoughtful Christian as Dr. Nevin was the last 
person in his riper } T ears to undervalue the significance of this mo- 
mentous crisis in his life, or to deny altogether the benefit he de- 
rived from it. It was to him a true awakening and a real decision 
in the great concern of personal, experimental religion, which car- 
ried him, because he was a good subject, a growing young Chris- 
tian, beyond all that he had known or experienced before. As 
such it entered deeply into his subsequent histoiy, where, however, 
in the end, the truth was separated from the dross and made avail- 
able for a higher purpose. But he was too honest and truthful in 
subsequent years not to utter his testimon}- and to speak freely of 
the vast amount of error that was involved in the movement from 
beginning to end. Thus he expressed himself in regard to it in his 
mature years : 

" It was based throughout on the principle that regeneration and 
conversion lay outside of the Church, had nothing to do with bap- 
tism and Christian education, required rather a looking away from 
all this as more of a bar than a help to the process, and were to be 
sought only in the way of magical illapse or stroke from the Spirit 
of God — denominated by Dr. Bushnell as the ictic experience — as 
something precedent and preliminary to entering the true fold of 
the Shepherd and Bishop of souls ! To realize this, then, became 
the inward strain and effort of the anxious soul ; and what was 
held to be saving faith in the end, consisted largely in a belief that 



Chap. Ill] criticisms 39 

the reality was reached. And so afterwards also, all was made to 
turn, in the life of religion, on alternating frames and states, and 
introverted self-inspection, more or less — under the guidance of 
some such work as Edwards on the Affections. An intense sub- 
jectivity, in one word, which is always something impotent and 
poor, took the place of a proper contemplation of the grand and 
glorious objectivities of the Christian life, in which all the true 
power of the Gospel lies. 

" My own experience in this way, at the time here under consid- 
eration, was not wholesome, but rather very morbid and weak. 
Alas, where was my mother, the Church, at the very time I most 
needed her fostering arms ? Where was she, I mean, with her true 
sacramental sympathy and care ? How much better had it been for 
me, if I had only been drawn from myself, by some right soul com- 
munication with the mysteries of the old Christian Creed ! As it 
was, I could not repeat the Creed, and as yet knew it only as one 
of the questionable relics of Popery. I had never heard it, even 
at Middle Spring ; and it was entirely foreign to the religious life 
of Union College. 

" So I went on with my spiritual life to the close of my college 
course in 1821, when I returned home a complete bankrupt for the 
time in bodily health. My whole constitution, indeed, was, I may 
say, in an invalid state. I was dyspeptic both in body and mind." 

Had he been, after his awakening, under the care of a judicious 
pastor, or catechist, who would have taught him the meaning of 
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments; had 
he then with others been asked to kneel before the altar in the pres- 
ence of the congregation, where the minister could pray for them 
that they might receive the Holy Spirit; and had he thus, according 
to the Presbyterian Liturgy, been received into the Church, he 
would have been very much strengthened and confirmed in his faith. 
It would have been a true confirmation, even though the minister's 
hands were not imposed on him at the time. And the probability, 
moreover, is, that he would have returned from Schenectady a better 
Christian, in better health, and in a more cheerful, happy state of 
mind. 



IV- AT HOME FROM 1821-1823 

Mt. 18-20 



CHAPTER IV 



DR. NEYIN having graduated when he was still in his nine- 
teenth year, the case seemed to require that he should wait a 
few years before entering upon his professional studies. His mind 
would become more mature, he would be better acquainted with the 
world, and be better prepared to profit b} T the new studies that 
might engage his attention. But as our times are in the hands of 
the Lord, so here in his case, the question as it regards what he was 
to do next after his graduation, was decided for him b} T divine 
Providence itself. His health was such as to require him to stay 
at home in the country, and, as it seemed to him, to do nothing. 
His disease, dyspepsia, was of the worst kind and caused him much 
discomfort and suffering. It had a fashion of its own, and it was 
something more serious a good deal than what goes by that name 
generally in our day. It appeared in the character of a new disease, 
which fell as a scourge on sedentary people, particularly of the 
younger class. We give a description of his sad condition at this 
time in his own plaintive language : 

"I had the complaint in its worst character, and it hung on to 
me with a sort of death-like grip, which for a time seemed to mock 
all hope of recovery or relief. I experienced all sorts of painful 
and unpleasant sj^mptoms, was continually miserable and weak, 
had an intense consciousness all the time of the morbid workings 
of m} T plrysical s}'stem, lived in a perpetual casuistry of dietetic 
rules and questions, and ran through all imaginable helps and cures, 
only to find that in my case, at least, they signified nothing. At 
the same time, of course, the disease lay as a cloud upon my mind, 
entered as a secret poison into all my feelings, and undermined the 
strength of my will. Emphatically might it have been called, in 
every view, a thorn in the flesh, and a very messenger of Satan sent 
to buffet me with sore and heav} T blows." If he could have read 
German at this time and sung Luther's great psalm, beginning 
with the sad but appropriate words, Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu 

(40) 



Chap. IV] morbid piety 41 

Dir, the} r might have been a comfort to him, perhaps medicine both 
to his soul and body. 

"And the strength of Christ, it must be sorrowfully confessed, 
was not made perfect in my weakness, for there was no proper 
room offered it to become so, in the reigning character of my re- 
ligious life as it stood at this time. As I have said before, this 
was also of a most sickly dyspeptic habit and I was poorly quali- 
fied, therefore, to show the power of grace, over against the weak- 
ness of nature. No doubt my physical condition had itself much 
to do with the morbid character of my religion, since, when the 
whole nervous system has come thus to be disordered and de- 
ranged, it is not possible that the higher life of the soul, in any 
case, should not become involved, more or less seriously, in the 
general wreck. But apart from this, my piety in its own nature was 
not of the sort required for such an emergency as that by which it 
was now tried as by fire. It was of the sort rather to aggravate and 
increase the trial; for, as I have already said, it was intensely sub- 
jective and introspective. Instead of looking to the outward re- 
deeming facts and powers of Christianity, it was too much a habit 
of looking into its own constitution, as if to be satisfied with the 
goodness of this first of all were the only way to true religious sat- 
isfaction in any other form. And as all was sure to be found largely 
unsatisfactory here, what would the result of such painful autopsy 
be — this everlasting studying of symptoms, this perpetual feeling 
of the pulse — other than the weakening of faith, and the darkening 
of hope, and the souring of that most excellent grace of charity it- 
self, which is the bond of perfectness and of all virtue — in one word, 
a hopeless valetudinarian state of the soul, answering in all respects 
to the broken condition of its outward tenement, the body. 

" This was the order of piety I brought home with me from col- 
lege. It was not after the pattern which had been set before me in 
my early youth in the Middle Spring Church. But the Presbyte- 
rian churches of the Valley generally, and Middle Spring itself,. 
were not true to their old position. The change of which I have 
spoken before, had already begun to make itself felt. The cate- 
chetical system was passing away. What had once been the living 
power of the old style of religion was, in fact, dying out ; and the 
motion of a new sort of religious life, heard of from other parts of 
the country, or exemplified irregularly among outside sects, was' 
silently at work in the minds of many ; causing it be felt, more or 
less, that the modes of thought, handed down from the fathers, had 
become a good deal prosy and formal, and needed at least to have in- 
3 



42 AT HOME FROM 1821-1823 [DlV. IV 

fused into them a more modern spirit. There was a slow process of 
Puritanizing going forward throughout the Presbytery of Carlisle, 
which, however, was still met with no small amount of both theo- 
retical and practical resistance from different quarters, giving the 
case the character of a continuous drawing in opposite directions, 
such as all could feel, without being able to make it plain in words. 

"All this only helped, of course, to promote the confusion, which 
was already at work in my own religious experience. As a conse- 
quence, I was, in some measure, divided between the conservative 
and the would-be progressive tendencies, having a sort of constitu- 
tional inborn regard for the true underlying sense of the first, but 
being drawn, also, toward the second by emotional sensibilities, 
which were not to be repressed. I held on outwardly to the regu- 
larities of the old Presbyterian life, as they were kept up in the 
Middle Spring Church ; but in thought and feeling I went far, at 
the same time, in justifying different Methodistical modes of piety, 
as being on the whole, perhaps, of more account for the salvation 
of the world. I was of that awakened young class in the congre- 
gation, who saw for the most part only a state of dead formality in 
its church services, and found it somewhat difficult to believe that 
the older sort of people generally had any kind of religion at all. 

" So much then for my general religious state, as far as I can 
fcall it to mind, in this darkly remembered, and, b}^ no means, pleas- 
ant interval in my life. It was confused and dark ; I might also 
say, without form and void, a sort of tumult uating chaos, in which 
conflicting elements and forces vainly sought for reconciliation, 
and which it was plain only some new power from heaven could 
reduce to order and peace. As for theology, nry great cade mecum 
and thesaurus, in those clays, was Scott's heavy Commentary on 
the Old and New Testament." 

Under these circumstances, it could hardly be expected that the 
valetudinarian should make much progress in his knowledge of books, 
or in severe intellectual study of airy kind. It was not desirable 
that he should. Evidently he already knew more than he could 
digest, and it was enough if he could retain the small amount of 
learning that he had brought with him from college, so as to keep 
it from gliding away from his possession.. His power of intellectual 
assimilation was not much better than that which was physical, and 
he was already under the weight of a double dyspepsia. Study, or 
even reading, for whole weeks and months, was a weariness to the 
flesh, during which the grasshopper was a burden, and desire failed, 
by reason of physical prostration. 



Chap. IV] diversions 43 

But Providence itself had sent him into this retreat in the desert 
for a good and wise purpose — that he might rest and rally his ener- 
gies for the busy life that was to follow. He was in the right place, 
in the bosom of nature, which was doing for him more perhaps than 
he was aware of. During these two years, however, he was by no 
means in the condition of a hybernating animal. His condition re- 
sembled rather that of the fields covered with snow, where the 
growing wheat only waits for the April sun that it may spring up 
in all its native luxuriousness. Unquestionably he must have made 
some progress in strength and knowledge, whether he observed it or 
not in his autopsies. There was a useful discipline in the experience 
through which he was called to pass ; and his outward relations and 
employments became, in various ways, a profitable school, whose 
practical lessons in the end inured to the benefit of others no less 
than to his own. 

Sometimes when a rich dinner was served for the family, whether 
its very odor was grateful or repugnant to him, in order to protect 
his health, to the dismay of father and mother, he would deny him- 
self of rich viands, mount his horse and ride four or five miles off 
into the country. Nature was to him the best nutriment. In his 
out-door exercises he became interested in the. science of Botany, 
and during the summer he prosecuted this cheerful study with much 
diligence and zeal, scouring the country for miles around on foot or 
horseback in search of plants and flowers. Another slight exercise 
he found in improving his knowledge of the French language. It 
did not occur to him at that time to pay any attention to the study 
of the German. He was surrounded by those who spoke the lan- 
guage, but it was to him, then, nothing more than common, useless 
Pennsylvania Dutch, and it was one of the last things dreamed of, 
that in after life he would turn to it with avidity to possess him- 
self of its treasures. That was a discovery which he made only in 
the fulness of time. 

Another diversion, from which he derived an important educa- 
tional advantage, was a debating club in the ancient borough of 
Shippensburg, nearer to which his father had come to reside. This 
it was his privilege to attend regularly every week through the 
winter months. It was in its way a most honorable literary senate, 
an institution like many others in the Cumberland Yalle}^ where 
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians trained themselves for public speak- 
ing. His physical ailment naturally led him at this time to dabble 
considerably in medical reading, which probably did him more 
harm than good ; but he found a more healthy diversion in writing 



44 AT HOME FROM 1821-1823 [DlY. IV 

for the public press, something that he had learned from his father, 
which disclosed an editorial tendenc}^ that exhibited itself subse- 
quently likewise in other members of the Xevin family. A num- 
ber of his poetical productions, based on David's Psalms or the 
Odes of Horace, appeared in a religious periodical newly started at 
Carlisle, in whose columns Dr. Bethune, a student at the time in 
Dickinson College, was then exercising his maiden muse, in the 
same wa} T . This was a useful literary exercise, but the author 
naively remarks in his review of himself, that whatever talent he 
may have had for the composition of poetiy in his 3'outh, it must 
have left him afterwards — except, we may add, onlr on one or two 
occasions. With this spirit of poetry, may have been con- 
nected the military spirit, which led him into a crack military com- 
pany at Shippensburg, and filled his imagination with pleasant 
dreams, more or less romantic, in the high and mighty office of 
Orderly Sergeant, with which he had the honor of being unan- 
imously invested in the compan}-. 

His regular business, however, so far as he could engage in busi- 
ness at all, was working on his father's farm. At first, as we niay 
suppose, he was not able to accomplish much in this direction on 
account of his general physical weakness. But, as time went on, 
he gradually gained a certain amount of strength, and in the end 
could put himself to all kinds of agricultural labor. This indeed 
seemed to be the only chance he had for regaining anything like 
tolerable health ; but he came, as he informs us, to look upon it 
more and more as his only proper avocation for life. In fact, the 
idea of going on to prepare himself for a learned profession was 
now pretty effectively crushed out of his mind. " I had no heart 
or spirit," he says, " for anything of the sort and was disposed to 
look upon my existence as a kind of general failure." He, there- 
fore, continued to plough and harrow his father's acres ; but in due 
course of time God called him from the plough, as He did Elisha 
of old, in order that he might be a prophet in Israel. 

Although a broken reed, he was not allowed, after all, to rest 
quietty in his own morbid conclusions. With some improvement 
in his health, whilst nearing the age of twentj-one, he felt himself 
urged towards a resumption of study through inward as well as out- 
ward pressure in a way which became more and more difficult to 
withstand. There was, indeed, but one direction in which the force 
of this constraint made itself felt. If he was to prepare himself for 
an}' one profession, it seemed to be admitted all around that it 
must be the Christian ministry. He was considered to have a 



Chap. IV] hesitation and doubt 45 

born determination to that office from the beginning. " That was 
looked at," he says, "in my being sent to college, and neighbors 
and friends held it to be my proper destination afterwards, pretty 
much as a matter of course. And then I was shut up to it also 
quite as decidedly, in my own mind, so far at least, that I had no 
power to think seriously of any other profession. I could not de- 
vote myself to medicine or law. But just here came in my chief 
difficulty. Could I then devote myself with free conscience to 
divinity? The negative side of the call was clear enough — this pro- 
fession, or else no profession; but how about the positive side? 
Was that also clear? Not by any means to my own mind, for my 
whole life, as already shown, was in a fog. This it was especially 
that caused me to hesitate and pause, when all around me appeared 
to think I should be going to the Theological Seminary. 

" The pressure, however, could not be escaped, and so, finally, 
through no small tribulation of spirit, I was brought to a decision. 
I would at all events go to Princeton and study theology, that 
much at least was settled. Whether I would enter the ministry 
afterwards or not, was another question. A course of three years 
in the Seminary might solve the doubt in different ways. One way 
thought of was that of my own death, for I was still in the merci- 
less hold of what I felt to be an incurable chronic disease, and had 
a general imagination that my life, in any case, was destined to be 
short. When I went to college, it had been with great misgivings 
in regard to my boyish scholarship. Such was my high ideal at 
the time of the reigning standard of college education. In propos- 
ing to enter the Theological Seminary I had like imaginings now in 
regard to my piety, which I felt to be of a very poor sort again, over 
against my similar idealization of the reigning piety of this venera- 
ble institution. Princeton divinity students, as far as they ap- 
peared among us at Shippensburg or Middle Spring, had a certain 
air of conscious sanctimony about them, which seemed to be re- 
buking all the time the common worldlinesss of these old congre- 
gations, especially on Sundays; and gave the notion of a young 
Presbyterianism, which was in a fair way soon to turn their exist- 
ing religious life into old fogyism. I was duly impressed with all 
this, in the case of three or four excellent young men, now in 
heaven, whom I well remember; and it was not, therefore, without 
a certain degree of fear and trembling, that I left m3 r home in the 
fall of 1823 and became matriculated, as a student, in the school of 
the prophets at Princeton." 



V-AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 

Mt. 20-25 



CHAPTER V 



THUS for a second time young Mr. Nevin left his home in Frank- 
lin Count} r , beneath the shadow of the Kittatinnies, to pursue 
his studies elsewhere. He knew whither he was going, and the 
prospect of allaying his thirst at the fountain of Presbyterian 
theology and orthodoxy was not without its charms. He was not 
entirely disappointed. Theological science was not without its in- 
tricacies, and had its difficult problems to solve, but they were con- 
genial to his mind, and he was now prepared to confront them ; 
and as strength permitted, to wrestle with them. He must be al- 
lowed here to give his own impressions, when, over fifty years after- 
wards, he took a retrospective view of his life at Princeton. 

"I look back," he says, "upon my days spent at Princeton, as, 
in some respects, the most pleasant part of nrv life. M} T entrance 
into the Theological Seminary brought with it, of itself, a certain 
feeling of repose, by putting to an end much of what had been 
painfully undetermined before, in regard to my life, and by offering 
me the prospect of a quiet harbor for three 3 T ears, at least (should 
I live that long), from further outside cares and fears; whilst I was 
met here, at the same time, with all the opportunities and helps I 
needed for prosecuting with energy the new work in which I had 
embarked, and I was in no hurry to get through the Seminary as 
many seemed to be. Looking beyond it to me was only looking 
into the dark. I cared not how long I might rest in it as my home. 

"So I gave nryself up steadily to its engagements and pursuits; 
and I did so, by general acknowledgment, with the best success. 
The institution itself was at the time, I may say, in the height of 
its prosperity and reputation. Dr. Miller and Dr. Alexander were 
in the full vigor of their spiritual powers, the two men best qualified 
in the whole Presbyterian Church, unquestionably, for the high 
position in which they were placed; while Professor Hodge, still 
young, and only recently invested with the distinction of being 
their colleague, gave ample promise also, even then, of what he has 

(46) 



Chap. V] the old dualism 4t 

since become for the Christian world. It was a privilege to sit at 
the feet of those excellent men. So I felt it to be at the time; and 
so I have never ceased to regard it as having been, through all the 
years since. On the best terms with my revered instructors, in 
most pleasant relations throughout with my fellow-students, in the 
midst of an old academic retreat, where the very air seemed to be 
redolent of literature and science, with no necessity and no wish to 
pass beyond it, is it any wonder that I came to look on Princeton 
as a second home, or that memory should still turn back to what it 
then was for my spirit, as an abode only of pleasantness?" 

This happiness and peace, however, were only relative, not abso- 
lute, not what the Italians, in their fair country, call a dolce far 
niente. Thus it is alwa}^s with believers in their pilgrimage through 
this vale of tears. The burden that he had brought along with him 
to the Seminary did not fall from his shoulders when he crossed the 
Delaware. His bodily ailments showed some promise of improve- 
ment, but he was in poor health all the while. This finally took the 
form of a settled affection of the liver; a heavy burden at first, 
which, however, in the course of } 7 ears, grew gradually more toler- 
able, although as late as the year 1870 he said " that there had not 
been a day of his life up to that time, in which he had not felt more 
or less pain from this additional malady." 

He had also brought with him the dualism in his religious life to 
which we have already referred. Embarrassments, fears and doubts, 
with regard to his own personal religion, the result of reading 
many casuistical books, still attended him, as it seems, all the time, 
as the}^ have many other earnest believers, who have not always 
been content to receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child ; or 
as many pagans do, when they first hear of the glad tidings of 
salvation. 

Cmlum, non animum, mutant, 
Qui trans mare currunt. 

The question of his call to the ministry hung with him always 
in painful suspense, creating within him doubt and uncertainty 
whether he should ever be able to enter it at all. There was much 
in the institution to promote earnest concern of this kind. Dr. 
Alexander's searching and awakening casuistry, especially in the 
Sunday afternoon conferences, was of a character not easy to be 
forgotten. It was by no means uncommon, we are told, for stu- 
dents, and these of the most serious and earnest class, to go away 
from these meetings in a state of spiritual discouragement border- 
ing on despair, rather than in the spirit that called them in ener- 



48 AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 [DlV. V 

getic tones to watch and fight and pray. Here again, Dr. Nevin 
saj-s, he had his own experiences, at times exceedingly deep and 
solemn, often with strong crying and tears, going in the way of a 
soul-crisis quite beyond the crisis of what was called his conver- 
sion at Union College ; and yet never coming up to his own idea 
of what the new birth ought to be. 

" The two different theories or schemes of piety refused to coa- 
lesce, and there seemed to be no one at hand to proclaim a broader 
and a better one, which would embrace what was good in each, and 
yet stand above them in a higher life of the soul. The Puritan 
theory, coining in from Xew England, pervaded the revival system 
of the times, and assumed to be the onby true sense of the Gospel 
all over the country. Over against it stood the old proper Presby- 
terian theory of the seventeenth century, which was also the gen- 
eral non-conformist theory of that time, as represented by Baxter, 
Owen, Howe and other like teachers of the same age. There was 
a difference between the two sj^stems, which could be felt better 
than explained. The old s} T stem was not perfect, nor, by an} T 
means, all that the true idea of the Church required ; but it stood 
much nearer to it than the more modern one, whose great charac- 
teristic it was on principle to supplant it, and to be unchurchly and 
unsacramental in its movements. My religious life, as already 
stated, started in the bosom of the old Reformed order. It be- 
longed to the Presbj'terianism of the Westminster Assembly." His 
rugged nature or constitutional life, therefore, would never allow 
him to feel altogether at home in the more modern system. 

" The instruction I received at Princeton," he says, " had much 
in it that went against the new here, and in favor of the old. Dr. 
Miller was strong, more particularly in certain ecclesiastical points, 
that would not always dove-tail with the new way of thinking ; 
while Dr. Alexander was always careful to recommend the divinity 
and piety of the seventeenth century, showing that the}' formed 
the elements in which mainly his own piety lived, moved, and had 
its being. But with all this, the unchurchly scheme, nevertheless, 
continued to exercise a strong practical force at Princeton, which 
an unsettled mind was not always prepared to withstand. The 
teaching was perhaps, not in all cases, steadily and consistently in 
one direction. It was evident that but few of the students cared 
much for the divinity of the Reformed Church in the seventeenth 
century, whether in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France or 
Great Britain. The prevailing style of religion, in the Seminary 
and elsewhere, lay in another wa}-, and the life of the students, 



Chap. V] the study of Hebrew 49 

whether they wished it to be so or not, fell inwardly and experi- 
mentally, more or less, under captivity to its power." Thus the 
conflict of opposing forces continued through all the years at 
Princeton in the mind of the perplexed theological sophomore in 
search of more light, although, as he informs us, towards the end 
of his course the conservative tendency, which prevailed with him 
at a later time, began to gain, to some extent, the upper hand. 

Among the different departments of study in the Seminar}^ that 
of Oriental and Biblical Literature, which was at the time in the 
hands of Dr. Charles Hodge, engaged at once a large share of his 
time and attention. This came to pass from no planning of his 
own, rather against his own will; and it is a somewhat curious and 
interesting fact, as it had an important bearing upon his subse- 
quent life. He had provided himself, at some cost, with the neces- 
sary text-books for the study of the Hebrew, and had just got far 
enough in the grammar to find it a wilderness of apparent difficul- 
ties, when the unwelcome discovery stared him in the face, that all 
the study of the students generalty amounted only to a smattering 
knowledge of some few chapters of the Bible, which was pretty sure 
to be forgotten again through neglect in after-life. The thought of 
so dry a task, ending in such barren and useless result, destroyed 
all zeal in the matter, and he came to the conclusion to omit the 
study altogether. 

Fortunately, however, he happened to have a wise and thought- 
ful counsellor in his friend, Matthew L. Fullerton, his room-mate, 
who was then in the senior class of the Seminary. He would not 
listen to his dropping • the study of the Hebrew. How could he 
know, he said, what use he might have for it hereafter in the ser- 
vice of the Church? In vain he plead his distaste for it, his want 
of firm health, and his own persuasion, that, if he ever should enter 
the ministry, it would be in some out-of-the-way country congrega- 
tion, where Hebrew would be of no sort of use whatever. His 
friend only laughed at such kind of talk, and put it so much the 
more earnestly to his conscience to do what he held to be plainly 
his present duty in the case, leaving consequences and results with 
God. In this way good advice in the end prevailed. 

" I took up again my half-discarded grammar," he says, "and de- 
termined, cost what it might, to make myself master of the new 
situation. This meant for me now, however, much more than gain- 
ing a mere introduction to the Hebrew Language. I must make it my 
own, so as to have it in sure use, and to be in no danger of losing 
it again. So to work with it I went in good full earnest, and to 



50 AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 [DlV. T 

nry great comfort, in a short time, the lion which was in the way 
disappeared altogether. I soon pushed ahead of the class in the 
exercise of reading, and by the time they had got through three or 
four chapters, I was at the end of Genesis. Then I laid down my 
plan to tax myself with a new lesson privately every day. The 
task soon became a pleasure, and in this way, before the close of 
my course, I made out to finish the whole Bible. I had a right 
then to be considered, as I was considered in fact, the best Hebrew 
scholar in the institution." 

This unforseen and casual turn, which was given to his theolog- 
ical studies at the beginning, exercised, in fact, a determining influ- 
ence on his whole seminary course, and through that, as we shall 
see, on his subsequent history. It led him to devote himself, more 
than he otherwise might have done, to biblical and exegetical learn- 
ing generally. It opened the way for his temporary employment 
as teacher at Princeton, and that position in turn drew after it im- 
mediately his call to the Western Theological Seminary at Alle- 
gheny City, Pa. God thus leadeth the blind by His Providence 
in paths that they have not known, making darkness light before 
them and crooked ways straight. 

But so far as his future life beyond the three years at Princeton 
was concerned, all was still painfully dark. He looked forward with 
fear and anxiety to the close of his course, and it seemed to be com- 
ing only too fast. In the end he felt himself precluded from enter- 
ing the ministry, and began to cast about for some outlet for the 
present from his difficulties in some other employment. His idea 
was to take a classical school, as a sphere in-which he could be most 
useful, and perhaps the most successful. His letters to his friends 
at this time were gloonrr and full of distress. A few extracts from 
several received from his excellent father, called forth by his dole- 
ful self-bewailings, when he was getting ready to leave Princeton 
and to enter upon some kind of public life, will throw light upon 
his inward state at this particular period of time. 

"I should be sorry, my dear son," he wrote in 1825, "should I 
live to see you mount the sacred desk, induced by any other mo- 
tive than the love of Christ and the salvation of souls. But I 
should also be sorry, if you should be deterred from preaching the 
Gospel by aiming at such a state of separation from worldly things 
as is seldom attainable, and by no means desirable ; because were 
such an indifference to the things of this world universally to ob- 
tain, it would very soon come to an end. 

"We find our great Guide and Master going about doing good, 



Chap. V] a father's sensible letters 51 

mixing and conversing- with all kinds of men, present at a wedding, 
directing the fishermen, supplying food and wine even by a miracle. 
The accounts which we read of the lives and experiences of pious 
men are to be received with caution. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. 
Of those with whose originals I became acquainted, the writer, even 
when he comes nearest the truth, imitates the painter, who gives 
a prominent appearance to beauty and elegance, but throws defects 
and deformities into the shade. I believe there are as pious men 
now living as Edwards, Doddridge, or those others you mention. 

" But there is still remaining in the world a little of that pious 
fraud, as it is usually termed, and the writers of memoirs of good 
men, whether auto-biographical or otherwise, think it better for the 
interest of our religion to conceal those blemishes which are in- 
separable from our nature, and present a faultless character for the 
imitation of posterit}^ But they err in this. Their design may be 
good ; but the effect is the reverse. They teach us to expect what 
never yet happened. So did not Paul. 

" And why, my son, stagger at what is written of those men when 
the pupil of Gamaliel presents himself to you in far other guise. 
He wrote not as Baxter and Watts, but he held the pen of inspira- 
tion. He conceals neither his faults nor his fears. His Letter to 
Timothy is by far more valuable than all that has been published 
on that subject since. But blessed be God, we may still ascend in 
our inquiry after truth, and drink at the fountain head. Remem- 
ber that our Lord and Master, Himself, catechized Peter as to his 
fitness to take upon himself the pastoral office. The examination 
was plain, short and simple, easy to be understood, and at once it 
reached the heart. If I stood thus, it would be enough for me to 
set out on my embassy — if otherwise qualified as to human learn- 
ing and talents for teaching — regardless of all the experience that 
has since then been left on record. 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me?' On his answering in the affirmative He immediately 
set him apart to the sacred office by saying: 'Feed my Lambs.'" 

Again in 1826 the judicious father writes : "The Presbytery of 
Carlisle will be organized in Carlisle next month; but I do not un- 
derstand from your last letter whether you intend to place your- 
self under its care now or not. You are clearly enough understood 
to sa} T , that you would not preach the Gospel now if admitted ; and 
from your allusions to ' disappointing expectations' and being urged 
to the ministry, I must conclude that } r ou are still doubtful whether 
you shall enter the sacred desk as a teacher. On one point let us 
understand one another. I thought that I never pointed out a pro- 



52 AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 [DlY. V 

fession to you, as I had determined never to do so to any of my 
sons. It is true I rejoiced when you yourself looked Zioaward, and 
proposed to enlist under the banner and become a soldier of Jesus 
Christ. I gave you cheerfully to Him, with thanks and with 
prayers, that even you might be accepted and made useful and wise 
to win souls. 

"But far be it from me, even at this stage of preparation, to urge 
you into the ministry. Unless } t ou feel that you can take upon 
you that sacred office, with your whole heart and soul devoted to 
your Master's cause, never to look back, having put 3 T our hand to 
the plough, you had better stop where you are. However I might 
have desired that you should preach the Gospel, believe me, my 
son, I would much rather you would never enter the pulpit, than 
that you should do so with doubt or hesitation, or, I would add, 
incapacity. You would do no good. 

" You have been too long immersed in schools and seminaries 
for the good of your bodily health ; and it may be that the health 
of your mind would also receive benefit by separating yourself 
from lectures and recitations. It is time for you to see the world 
as it is, and know your fellow creatures as they are. There is dan- 
ger of your forming erroneous opinions of men and things, of your 
conceiving and brooding over ideas of duty and conduct altogether 
Utopian and visionary, never to be realized." These were words 
that were well spoken. They embody the spirit of a sound Chris- 
tian faith, and with it good common sense, not as yet affected by 
the prevailing casuistry of the times. 

From this correspondence it may be seen that the son was in 
doubts in regard to the future down to the last year of his theo- 
logical course at Princeton ; and so it continued to the end. Some- 
thing, however, had to be done, and he therefore corresponded with 
Dr. De Witt, of Harrisburg, with regard to opening a classical 
school in that place. Such a situation might give him useful em- 
ployment for awhile, and at the same time leave him free to act as 
Providence might direct. The profession of teaching after all was 
for him, in his existing state of mind, the only allowable alterna- 
tive to his entering at once into the ministry, and it might turn 
out to be his future mission. But " man proposes, and God dis- 
poses." Just at this time, all at once, " the high black wall before 
him gave way, and light fell upon his pathway, as unexpectedly, as 
if it had opened before him from heaven itself." Arrangements 
had been made that Dr. Hodge should make a two years" visit to 
Europe, with a view of prosecuting his studies in its Universities, 



Chap. Y] biblical antiquities 53 

particularly in Germany, so as to better qualify himself for his 
duties in the Seminary. 

" And so now," says Dr. Nevin, " within only a few days of the 
close of the Seminary } T ear, and without the least hint of any such 
thing having reached me before, he tendered me in form the priv- 
ilege of filling his place, as assistant teacher in the Seminary dur- 
ing the time of his absence. The salary was small, only two hun- 
dred dollars a year ; not quite enough to live on, in those days. 
But I made no account of that. It seemed the Lord's doings, and 
was marvellous in my eyes, leaving no room for any doubt with 
regard to duty." 

He was a man. of prayer, and had sent up many earnest cries to 
God in secret that He might direct his way, and accordingly he felt 
persuaded that his prayers were being answered. A longer stay at 
Princeton would be more useful to him than a classical school at 
Harrisburg. He therefore accepted this appointment at once. The 
work of his life was to be vastly more important than one in the 
school-room, and he needed still more time and reflection to pre- 
pare himself for it. As yet he knew little or nothing of what God 
intended him to accomplish in his day. In fact, he himself did not 
yet know whether he had anything at all of special note to accom- 
plish in the world. 

Thus his three years at Princeton were lengthened into five ; and 
his existence became in this way very much entwined with the 
place as a settled residence. His studies, as a matter of course, 
went on more effectively than before. Whilst he instructed others, 
he instructed himself also. To learn and to teach are, in a certain 
sense, reciprocal needs and mutually complemental powers. They 
go hand in hand together. 

A heavy burden having thus been removed in a measure from 
his mind, Professor Nevin worked with energy and zeal. As a 
consequence, having access to pleasant and cultured society, he 
became more cheerful and happy. His good father in Franklin 
County gave him the use of one of his best horses, on which he 
was to take exercise every day in pleasant weather — except Sun- 
day. The father further stipulated with the son that he was to 
pay for his feed, so that the support of the horse might not come 
out of his salary. He also saw to it that the animal w T as property 
caparisoned, " in order that he might appear decently on classic 
ground." 

During this period, as the result of the direction which his studies 
had taken in the Seminary, he wrote his widely known Biblical 



54 AT PRINCETON FROM 1823-1828 [DlV. Y 

Antiquities, to which he was stimulated b}^ an urgent request, which 
he says he felt he had no right to refuse. In the hands of the 
American Sunday-school Union, it has been circulated far and wide, 
and continues in general popular use, without a rival, in Christian 
families to the present time. It was one of the very best and most 
instructive works ever published by the Union. It is not deroga- 
tory to this small work to say that it contains little or nothing that 
may not be found in Jahn's large work on the same subject, or in 
his Abridgement in Latin, translated in this country b} T Dr. Upham 
in 183t. The arrangement of subjects on the whole is the same by 
both authors. But Jahn's works are learned, dry as they are 
learned and accurate, consulted for the most part only as books of 
reference, or studied as text books in the schools. Nevin's " An- 
tiquities," on the other hand, are full of life and spirit, and can be 
read with edification by Christians generally. Learning, or mere 
barren facts, are here animated by the spiritual life which properly 
pertains to them as their background, and gives to them their true 
meaning. It is this spiritual character or tendency that imparts 
to the Antiquities a special charm to all diligent readers of the Holy 
Scripture. 



VI-AT HOME FROM 1828-1830 

Mt. 25-27 



CHAPTER VI 



HIS pleasant student life at Princeton ended with the return of 
Dr. Hodge from Europe in 1828. Before that, however, he 
had been fixed on as the proper person for the chair of Biblical 
Literature in the new Theological Seminary, which the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church was about to establish at 
Allegheny, Pa. In the meantime, having previously placed himself 
under the care of the Carlisle Presbytery, he appeared before that 
body at a special meeting, held Oct. 2, 1828, in the city of Phila- 
delphia, and after a satisfactory examination, was licensed to preach 
the Gospel, after which, for more than a whole year, he availed him- 
self of opportunities as they presented themselves to exercise his 
gifts, in a more or less itinerant way, for the edification of the 
churches. 

"As already intimated," he says, " it had come to a sort of gen- 
eral understanding before I left Princeton, that I was to pass into 
the service of the new Western Theological Seminary, whose loca- 
tion was now fixed at Allegheny City, at the time a mere suburb of 
Pittsburgh. Dr. Herron, the President of the Board of Directors, 
had come on to Princeton for the purpose of consulting with the 
professors there, in regard to a proper person for the position, and 
was at once satisfied that I was the only one to be thought of in the 
case. The discovery was to him, at the same time, a very welcome 
one ; for although as yet he knew nothing of me personally, he had 
been in his youth an intimate acquaintance and friend of my father, 
both having grown up on the banks of the same beautiful stream — 
my own birth place also — which still bears its old name of Herron 
Branch, derived from the name of his family. He assumed towards 
me, from the first, the relation of a kinsman, treated me throughout 
as a son, and continued my firm and fast friend on to the end of his 
life in the eighty-seventh year of his age " — a nomen clarnm et 
venerabile, in the Church. 

" The way, however, was not open for the new institution to go 

55 



56 AT HOME FROM 1828-1830 [DlV. VI 

into full operation at once ; and, besides, nrr own health seemed to 
require building up, if it were possible, hy pursuing, for a time at 
least, a different kind of life. So there was another interim or break, 
in what might be called my general academical career, which, how- 
ever, was not so long this time indeed as it was when I came home 
from college. It lasted only fourteen months. But the period was 
spent in much the same way as before, as a general vacation from 
all study." 

At this time it so happened that he became interested — somewhat 
enthusiastically — in the study of Political Economy, through his 
acquaintance with Professor Vethake, who taught that subject with 
ability in the College at Carlisle. It appeared to him that this 
science could be used with good effect as an argument in favor of 
Christianity. He, therefore, became so carried awa} T with its pre- 
tensions that he prepared an article on its meritorious character, 
for publication in some religious paper, where, however, an older 
and wiser head, a friend of his, did not allow it to make its appear- 
ance. Subsequently he modified his views on the new science 
which promised so much, and his admiration for it passed away. 
Afterward he had no regrets that his maiden effort was ignored hy 
his friend, Dr. Green, the editor. This branch of knowledge, as he 
affirmed, starting from its own merely natural and secular premises, 
cannot bring any positive aid to Christianity^. Like all other merely 
humanitarian views of the world's life, it can only end in showing 
negatively, through its own helplessness, the necessitj' -of help from 
a higher sphere than that of mere nature — that is, a strictly super- 
natural redemption for society, no less than for the individual him- 
self. This, indeed, is true of all the sciences, of moral philosophy 
no less than astronomy. They, with philosophy in general, can only 
come to the feet of Christ, and like the wise men of old, laying their 
treasures there, seek for the redemption of humanity and the solu- 
tion of all life problems from Him in His wonderful nature and 
work. The arts and sciences in right relation to Christianity are 
in the highest degree useful hand-maidens; but then they derive 
their usefulness more from Him, who is the Truth, than they do 
from themselves. 

Study, however, during this interim, was not the special occupa- 
tion of one who had just been solemnly admitted to the ranks of 
the ministry. He found this rather whilst in quest of health and 
strength, in preaching the Gospel whenever an opportunity pre- 
sented itself. At Princeton he had been accustomed to do a good 
deal of exhorting and teaching in an informal wav, but now as he 



Chap. TI] begins to preach 57 

was licensed to preach in full form, he considered it a duty as well 
as a privilege to exercise such gifts as he possessed in a regular 
way. He preached or lectured in churches and in school-houses 
frequently, and as often as twice a week, and his discourses being 
of a plain, popular character, caused them to be received with favor. 

From the start he adopted the plan of preaching without man- 
uscript, trusting, for the most part, simply to a brief outline of 
points for his guidance in bringing into use his previous prepara- 
tion. This subjected him, at times, to a slow and hesitating man- 
ner of speaking ; but he assures us that however it might be for 
others, it was the only method in the end for himself. It was also 
a gratification to his honored father, for this was a point on which 
he, with many others at that time, held no uncertain opinions. In 
one of his letters, he thus expresses himself: 

" The longer I live the more convinced I have felt that this prac- 
tice of reading sermons, which is becoming so lamentably preva- 
lent, is doing much harm to our Church. Who does not see, that 
the Methodists, blundering along, and limping as they go, secure 
the attention of their audiences better than the formal reader of 
the most labored productions ? There is a certain something — 
sympathy or whatever else it may be called — communicated by the 
eye, and flowing indeed from every lineament in the face of an 
earnest, animated speaker, which is worse than lost in the reader of 
the same discourse, ever and anon feeding his utterance from the 
supply before him. The misery of ministers confining themselves 
to their written productions does not end with their pulpit exer- 
cises. They are painfully deficient when called upon, as it often 
happens, to speak a word at a funeral, in a sick room, or in many 
other places, which will occur to you. Now all ready utterance, as 
well as memory, is improved by exercising it ; and oh! how I have * 
felt for the habitual reader on such occasions ! But enough. May 
the good God who has hitherto protected and led you on, and to 
whose care I have freely surrendered you, furnish you most amply 
with those gifts and graces, which He knows will best forward His 
mighty work, and make even you instrumental in winning man}'; 
souls to Christ." 

The father here, doubtless, had much to do in confirming the 
habit of extemporaneous speaking in the son. It gave him full 
freedom in th,e pulpit, and it was of much assistance to him in the 
discussion of difficult questions at Synod and elsewhere. In speak- 
ing his language flowed as accurately and idiomatically in pure 
English, as if he had had his manuscript before him. But his 
4 



58 AT HOME FROM 1828-1830 [DlV. VI 

facility in preaching in this way, made it less necessary for him to 
write out his discourses, and he has left very few behind. His 
great sermons, very many of them, were well worthy of preserva- 
tion in book form, although he never thought of anything of the 
kind. Now the}' live only in the memories of those who heard 
them. At the present da}', the} 7 would be quite as valuable to 
thoughtful readers as his published articles or books. In the 
latter he addressed the head ; in the former he appealed much more 
to the heart. 

" I may add," he says, " in regard to my preaching that, as there 
was no artificial orator}^ about it, so neither was it in the ranting 
Methodistical vein. Its object was to set forth the so-called evan- 
gelical truths of Christianity, as I then understood them, in a 
thorough, earnest and practical way. In this view, it had a ten- 
deney to take in it more or less of a John-the-Baptist-style, holding 
its position on the threshold of the Gospel more than in the very 
sanctuary and bosom of the Gospel itself. It was felt to be 
awakening, searching and solemn ; and as something on the whole 
considerably ahead of the humdrum, formal manner, which, in the 
view of mam', had been too much the fashion with the older min- 
isters. As for rayself, however, it gave me very little satisfaction ; 
and I never left the pulpit without feeling (and knowing) that my 
work was very much of a botch — so far short did it seem to come 
of my own idea of right preaching." 

His religious earnestness during this period of rest was very 
great, and not laid aside when he left the pulpit. It manifested 
itself in his daily walk, and made itself felt very sensibly in the 
family circle. When he returned from college, amidst all his dis- 
couragements, he daily conducted family worship, very much to 
the delight of his parents ; and to the especial relief of his father, 
who, on account of a natural diffidence, found it a severe task to 
make a free prayer. But when the son came from Princeton, and 
was a licensed minister, there was a priest in the family, who felt it 
to be his duty strictly to observe the hour of family worship, and 
to make it as thorough and impressive as possible. The j T ounger 
members of the family were all required to be present and in their 
places; and if the services were at times protracted by the intro- 
duction of homilies or practical remarks, they were expected to 
pa}' strict and solemn attention. They listened as well as they 
could, while the incense of prayer and praise ascended morning 
and evening from this happy country home. 

Among other things, the cause of Temperance, which was then 



Chap. VI] the temperance cause 59 

something new, engaged the special zeal of the licentiate just from 
Princeton. He threw himself into it with all the ardor of a young 
Melanchthon and became an agitator and a rigid temperance ad- 
vocate, expecting all to give "aid to the mighty reformation, which 
seemed to be looming in the future." There was, he says, pre- 
sumption in this feeling, of course, and, no doubt, a touch of ju- 
venile fanaticism in his preaching on the subject. It was one on 
which it seemed to him, that to be as intolerant as possible was 
doing God's service, and the more fiery the zeal the better. He 
published an address on Temperance, full of severe language, quite 
as much so as that of any ultra modern advocate ; and his temper- 
ance sermons bore down, especially, without any sort of mitiga- 
tion, on what he held to be the heinous sin of manufacturing and 
selling ardent spirits. If this gave offence in certain quarters, he 
rather courted it than otherwise, as a proof of his fidelity. It was 
a cheap sort of martyrdom in a good cause. On-ce he preached two 
sermons on the same day to a large and wealthy congregation, and 
though he had come only to supply their vacant pulpit for a single 
Sunday, some of the people were under the impression that he was 
a candidate for the vacancy and spoke of getting him as their pas- 
tor ; but his second sermon before them was an uncompromising 
assault on distillers and rumsellers, to which class of persons, un- 
fortunately, several of the " pillars of the Church " belonged. The 
consequence was, of course, the dropping of his name, and a quiet 
understanding all around that, even if he could be had, he would 
not be there, at least, "just the right man in the right place" — as a 
prominent elder, owner of a distillery, expressed himself. 

In the spring of 1829 he made an extensive excursion through 
the country on horseback for the benefit of his health. He crossed 
the mountains and went to Pittsburgh to learn more about the con- 
dition of the new Theological Seminar}^ It had been started under 
Dr. Janewa3 T , but he had gone away in disgust; because the whole 
enterprise looked as if it was destined to end in a failure. Still 
Dr. Luther Halse}^ was expected to be on the ground, and it was 
now arranged that Professor Nevin should hold himself in readi- 
ness to join him at an early day. His excursion carried him after- 
wards to Erie, the Falls of Niagara, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady, 
New Haven, Princeton and finally home again in July. Subse- 
quently he took charge of the vacant congregations of Big Spring 
for the period of four months, as the stated supply. Many friends 
there, and among them especially their former minister, Dr. Will- 
iams, were very anxious to secure him as their permanent pastor. 



60 AT HOME FROM 1828-1830 [DlV. YI 

There was also a serious movement to get him back again to Prince- 
ton in the position of a standing writer of "books for the American 
Smichvy-school Union. But the path of duty plainly directed him 
to Allegheny City. 

Just at this time, however, when his prospects of usefulness in 
the Church rose up to his view in brighter colors than ever before, 
there fell upon him the shadow of a great sorrow. His father, upon 
whom he had leaned for support in all his difficulties and trials, 
still in the vigor of his age and strength, took sick and died. He 
was now a man himself and had gone forth from the parental roof; 
but in a certain respect his father's presence, as a power holding be- 
tween himself and the world, was still a need for him almost as 
much as it was in his earlier 3-outh. His death brought with it a 
sense of overwhelming desolation, such as he had never felt before; 
and caused him, as he sadly says, to feel as if a large part of his 
own life had been buried in the grave. It threw upon him new 
responsibilities and cares of the most serious kind; for although 
the family was left in sufficiently comfortable worldly circumstances, 
it needed years } T et of guardianship and guidance ; and to him ac- 
cording^, as the first born of the household, this trust fell, not 
onbv in the course of nature, but also by his d3'ing father's wish. 
Through this ordering of Providence his life assumed a new and 
important phase, especially so when taken in connection with his 
going soon afterwards to the Western Theological Seminaiy. 
Henceforward he was to be in some degree, at least, a man of busi- 
ness, no less than a man of letters and of books. 

The following beautiful testimony, which he bears to his father's 
sterling worth, we here give in his own language. " I have already," 
he says, in the sketch of his own life, " allowed the image of mj- 
father to come into view, speaking, as it were, for itself. Take 
him altogether, he was a man of rare and admirable nature. Few 
men surpassed him in fine social and moral qualities. Earnestness 
and genial humor were happily blended in his spirit. He was loved 
and respected wherever he was known, both for his public and his 
private virtues. His soul was the shrine of integrit3 T , honor, kind- 
ness and truth ; it refused all contact also with whatever was vile 
and mean. His religion, too, was of a better kind than common ; 
although there were some things about it, which to my own judg- 
ment, as it then stood, were not altogether satisfactoiw. It was 
not demonstrative, for that was not his nature ; but it was unques- 
tionably sincere, and it wrought as the power of principle, strongly 
and profoundly, in his Avhole life. He was not one of those who 



Chap. VI] a beautiful testimony 61 

make haste to be rich, and in whom the love of money grows with 
their growth in age. On the contrary, there was with him a measure 
of unworldliness and easy contentment in his outward estate, in 
this view, which now that I look upon it from the general feverish 
existence of onr present age, is altogether marvellous. 

" In 'two things he was quite ahead of his present generation — to- 
tal abstinence from ardent spirits, and a mortal hatred of all slavery. 
With his last years, there was a marked turning of his thoughts more 
and more to the solemnities of the invisible world. He seemed to 
identify himself somehow with the idea of my entering the ministry, 
and took an interest finally in my preaching as though it were to 
be by proxy his own work. He gave me to understand that when 
I became fairly settled at Allegheny, he would quite possibly sell 
his farm, retire with his family and end his days in the same place. 
That dream, alas ! That dream destined not to be fulfilled ! His 
family did follow me there in fact, but he lay down, hoping for the 
resurrection, beside his own father and mother, in the rural buiying- 
ground at Middle Spring. 

" Only a short time before his last sickness, by special invitation 
I had gone to preach what might be called a dying sermon at the 
house of a Mr. McKee, an aged, bed-ridden elder of the congrega- 
tion, who soon after departed this life. My father was there also, 
on foot. The text was Psalm 146:5 : ' Happy is he that hath the 
God of Jacob for his help; whose hope is in the Lord his God.' 
On our way home in passing through a range of woods in a Sep- 
tember twilight, he seemed to be unusually serious and thoughtful; 
and among other things, he said there was one text, which struck 
him as especially appropriate and precious on such occasions, the 
words of the Saviour to his disciples on the sea of Galilee : ' Be of 
good cheer ; it is I ; be not afraid.' How often have these mystical 
words come back upon me since, hallowed by this sacred associa- 
tion ! He was soon after himself in the midst of the dark sea, whose 
name is death ; but while crossing it, he assured me in the calmest 
way that he had no fear, that he knew in whom he had believed, and 
was well persuaded that all would come right in the end. And so 
he passed away in the Lord. 

" This held me back for a time ; and it was not until the begin- 
ning of December, therefore, that I crossed the mountains and 
joined Dr. Halsey, finally, in the work of organizing the new West- 
ern Theological Seminary." 



VII— AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 

Mt. 27-37 



CHAPTER VII 



PROFESSOR NEVIN filled the chair of Biblical Literature 
in the Western Theological Seminary, during a period of 
ten years. It fell to his lot through life to labor for the most part 
in situations attended with more than ordinary difficulties and 
hard work ; and the same lot awaited him now, when he was called 
to employ his broad shoulders in sustaining the new enterprise at 
Allegheny Cit}^, connecting the East with the West. 

In 1830 it had no buildings, no endowment, no libraiy, no pres- 
tige from the past, and only a doubtful and uncertain promise from 
the future. It had indeed been established by the General Assem- 
bly ; but there was no special interest felt for it in the Church 
generally. The affections of the East were wedded to Princeton ; 
and in the West there was a large amount of dissatisfaction with 
its location at Pittsburgh, as not being sufficientl} 7 western for 
those particular wants which it was intended to meet. 

The Institution was thus thrown in fact on the care mainly of 
the churches in Western Pennsylvania, and seemed to have slen- 
der prospects of receiving active sj^mpathy from any other quar- 
ter. Dr. J. J. Janeway, as already mentioned, after being on the 
ground for a short time as Professor of Theolog}^, had resigned 
his situation, and his loss of confidence in the success of the Insti- 
tution and its localit}' had, of course, the effect to discredit the 
whole undertaking in the eyes of the public. So it sometimes 
happens with those who, after having once put their hands to the 
plough, look back. Dr. Luther liaise}' was left to himself in the 
field, laboring single-handed as his successor, and anxiously wait- 
ing for his new colleague. Three years later, the Rev. Ezra Fisk, 
D. D., of blessed memory, was appointed to the chair of Didactic 
Theology, but he died in 1833 before entering upon his office, and 
subsequently in 1835, the Rev. David Elliott, D.D., was called to 
the same chair. The withdrawal of Dr. Halse} T from the Institution 
in 183*7 therefore left only two professors in the facuby as before. 

(62) 



Chap. YII] marriage 63 

There are now some five or six learned professors in the Western 
Seminary, dividing among them the work which in those earlier 
days two alone were expected to manage as best they conld. The 
Institution, moreover, depending as it was obliged to do on transient 
agencies and special collections among the churches, was subjected 
all the time to more or less financial difficulty, which in its way 
told seriously on the comfort of those engaged in its service. Their 
chairs during those years were far from being sinecures. To all 
concerned in it, whether as Directors or Trustees, the work of 
building up the new Seminary was, in the circumstances, anything 
but a holiday business. They labored faithfully in the day of small 
things, and others afterwards entered into their labors. One sow- 
eth and another reapeth. In the course of time, it was a satisfac- 
tion to those pioneers to see that their labor and self-sacrifice were 
not in vain in the Lord. The Western Seminary has grown to be 
a name and a power in the Presbyterian Church. It has sent forth 
its thousands to preach the everlasting Gospel, and not a few of 
them, as missionaries in foreign lands. 

On going to Pittsburgh Professor Nevin found his first home in 
the kind and pleasant family of the Rev Dr. Francis Herron — born 
in It 74, died in 1860 — a warm-hearted Scotch-Irishman, for many 
years the patriarchal pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in 
the place, and, more than any other man, the founder and father 
of the Theological Seminaiy. This was a ve^ special privi- 
lege and favor which the new professor highty prized at the time, 
and which he ever held in grateful remembrance. The loss which 
he had sustained in the death of his father, his best friend and 
counsellor, we might say, was in a large degree cancelled when 
he was admitted into the family of his father's friend. He now 
had, as it were, a spiritual father upon whom he could lean in his 
adversities. The arrangement continued for nearly three years, 
when the removal of his mother and her family to the West opened 
the way to his establishing with her a new home in Allegheny City. 
This was followed two years afterwards by his marriage, which 
seemed to give him a still more permanent settlement in the place. 
He found his wife in the person of Martha, the second daughter of 
the Hon. Robert Jenkins, the well-known iron-master of Windsor 
Place, in the immediate vicinity of Churchtown, Lancaster county, 
Pa. The marriage was solemnized by the Rev. John Wallace, pas- 
tor of the Presbyterian Cnurch of Pequea, on New Year's Day of 
the year 1835. 

The choice of a wife, a momentous step in the life of men gener- 



64 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. YII 

ally, was in the case of Professor Nevin a wise and judicious one. 
He needed just such a partner of his life as he found in the com- 
panion of his choice. Subsequent events proved that she was 
worthy of such a man. In very mairy different respects she was 
helpful to him in the great work to which he was consecrated. 
Her home was a happy and a cheerful one, modelled after that to 
which she had been accustomed at Windsor Place. Mrs. Xevin, in 
addition to great personal refinement, was versed in literature, and 
could write for the press when occasions called for it ; but she 
devoted herself mostly to her sphere in- the family circle, and drew 
around her people of cultivation and superior social standing. At 
the time we write these lines, a widow indeed, over four-score years 
of age, at her pleasant residence, " Caernarvon Place," near ^Lan- 
caster city, she retains much of the vivacity of j^outh, and feels her- 
self at home in the society of professors, students, and cultured 
people generally, with feelings deeply in sympathy with the poor 
in their trials. Bearing enshrined in her heart the memories of 
loved ones who lived in the past, she looks forward to a happ} T 
reunion with them in the better land in the great hereafter. 

The children of this branch of the Xevin family, useful and 
honored in different sphere of life, social, literary and artistic, are 
as follows: William Wilberforce, Esq.; Robert Jenkins, D.D., 
LL.D.; Miss Alice; Miss Blanche; Martha Finley, wife of Robert 
Sajnre, Esq., of Bethlehem, Pa. ; Cecil and John, who died in their 
3~outh,when they had excited high hopes of future usefulness, leav- 
ing behind sad but sweet memories ; and Herbert, who died in in- 
fancy. 

The father-in-law, Mr. Jenkins — born in 1767 — was the great- 
grandson of David Jenkins, who had emigrated from Wales and 
settled in Chester county, Pa., at an early day. His son John re- 
ceived from William Penn the grant of a large tract of land lying 
along the Conestoga Creek in the eastern portion of the adjoining 
county of Lancaster. After the Revolution, David, the second, 
the son of John, purchased the Windsor Iron Works, previously 
owned Iry an English Company, built a commodious house near 
Churcht own, managed the works with much profit, and at his death 
left them to his son Robert. — Robert Jenkins was one of the fore- 
most men in his county, prominent in his day as a member of the 
State Legislature and of the National Congress, also a stern and 
inflexible patriot. His wife Catharine was the daughter of Rev. 
John Carmichael, pastor of the Brainbywine Manor congregation, 
whose piety and patriotism were of a high order. Mrs. Jenkins 



Chap. VII] an evangelist 65 

was a lady of culture, energy and influence, a zealous and exem- 
plary member of the Presbyterian Church, interested in all its 
movements, and widely known as a mother in the Presbyterian 
Israel. With great dignity, grace and hospitality she presided 
over the stately mansion on the banks of the Conestoga, all of 
which, under her careful supervision, was brought into beautiful 
harmony with the wide-spread and picturesque landscape with 
which it was surrounded. 

During the period of Professor Nevin's connection with the 
Western Seminary, he continued to exercise his gift of preaching, 
which was a benefit to his body and mind as well as to the souls of 
others. In this way, for the most part, he performed nearly as 
much service as if he had been the settled pastor over a congrega- 
tion. For a while he remained a mere licentiate ; for as Jie had 
been slow before in applying for licensure, so now again he'was slow 
in taking upon himself what seemed to be the much more serious 
responsibility and vows of ordination. In the course of time, 
however, he was set apart to the ministry in full, by the laying 
on of the hands of the Presbytery of Ohio, with a somewhat char- 
acteristic charge by the President of Jefferson College, the Rev. 
Dr. Matthew Brown. His preaching carried him out largely among 
country congregations, on the invitations of pastors desiring his 
assistance, which, it was known, he was always ready to extend 
without any remuneration or return service of any kind. These 
visits had to be performed necessarily on horseback, over what 
were very often bad roads, and once, at least, on foot for fifteen or 
twenty miles, with no small exposure at times to the roughest kind 
of weather. But they gave him on the whole a good amount of 
healthful exercise, and had the effect of hardening his physical 
constitution, something which he needed. 

During a part of the time he preached with a considerable degree 
of regularit}^ to a large and interesting Young Ladies' Seminary at 
Braddock's Field, eight miles from Pittsburgh, up the Monongahela 
River ; and finally he took charge of the Hiland congregation about 
the same distance out from the city in another direction, where he 
preached every two weeks for a j^ear by appointment of the Ohio 
Presbytery as its regular supply. " It has come to be considered 
proper enough," he naively remarks in this connection, "for the 
Professors in Seminaries sometimes to take charges, and to receive 
salaries from them in addition to their full pay received for their 
services as teachers." But in his day, there was no precedent of 
this sort to guide a doubtful conscience; and acting from mere ab- 



66 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

stract principles in the case, he was not able to see clearly his right 
in this instance to any such double payment ; the more especially 
so, as he knew the treasury of the Seminary to be all the time in 
the most pinching need. It was a distinct understanding, there- 
fore, between himself and the Presbytery, in this last case, that his 
services in the congregation were to be free; but yet, at the same 
time, that the salary paid for them should go to the Theological 
Seminary in whose service he then stood, and in no part whatever 
to himself. 

During his ten years at Allegheny, he appeared frequent^ before 
the public through the press. For such occasions he always pre- 
pared himself thoroughly, and his productions were regarded as 
wortrry of an extensive circulation. Of the various discourses and 
tracts, which he put forth from time to time in this way, by appoint- 
ment or request, the following seem to deserve mention in this 
place as characteristic of his mind during this stadium of his 
history. 

1. The Scourge of God: A Sermon preached in the First Pres- 
byterian Church of Pittsburgh, July 6, 1832, on the occasion of a 
Cit}^ Fast, observed in reference to the approach of the Asiatic 
Cholera. 

The pestilence had broken out in Canada, and seemed to be on 
its way to Pittsburgh. For a time the agitation was intense. All 
faces indicated dark apprehensions, as if the sword of the destin- 
ing angel were felt to be hanging over the city. In this state of 
things, there was a general call for a da}^ of fasting, humiliation 
and prayer, and well was the day observed. The sermon here 
noticed was preached before a very large audience, that listened 
to it as with the solemnity of death, and on the same day a number 
of leading citizens of the place joined in soliciting a copy of it for 
publication. "One strong point," the author says, "was an un- 
merciful denunciation of all manufacturers and venders of ardent 
spirits." 

2. The Claims of the Christian Sabbath : A Report, read and 
adopted at a meeting of the Presb3 T ter} T of Ohio, April 21, 1836. It 
formed a considerable tract, and was intended " to draw up a judg- 
ment and a plan of action against the desecration of the Holy Sab- 
bath, on the part of members of the Church, either owning or using 
in an} T waj r Sabbath-violating conveyances on land or water." After 
the report was adopted, it was further ordered that 10,000 copies 
should be published in pamphlet form, by means of a subscription, 
opened in the Presbytery for this purpose. 



Chap. YII] sermons and addresses 67 

3. The English Bible: A Brief View of the History and Merits 
of the English Version in common use. Published in pamphlet form 
in 1836. 

4. Personal Holiness: A Lecture delivered June, 1837, at the 
opening of the Summer Term in the Western Theological Seminary. 
Published by request of the Students. 

5. The Seal of the Spirit : A Sermon preached in the Presb}'- 
terian Church at Uniontown, Pa., January 21, 1838. Published by 
the Session of the Church. 

6. Party Spirit: An Address delivered before the Literary 
Societies of Washington College, Washington, Pa., Sept. 24, 1839. 

7. A Pastoral Letter : On the Subject of Ministers' Salaries, ad- 
dressed by the Presbytery of Ohio to the churches under its care, 
Jan. 18, 1840. Ministers in the Presb3^tery were inadequately 
supported, because the reigning rates of their salaries had not kept 
pace with the advanced rates of living. By failing to receive the 
necessary support, some had been compelled to turn aside from 
their proper vocation and work. The Pastoral Letter set forth a 
painful picture of this sad state of things, based on a full induction 
of facts, and called upon the churches in solemn terms to redress 
the evil. 



CHAPTER VIII 

IX addition to such occasional productions, he wrote also quite 
extensively froni time to time,inainly on practical subjects, for 
the Christian Herald; but much more largelj^, during the years 
1833 and 1834 for the Friend, a literary and moral weekly journal, 
which he undertook to edit in behalf of the " Young Men's Society 
of Pittsburgh and Vicinity," regarded as an important institution 
at the time, in whose organization he was called to take a somewhat 
prominent part. 

The Friend had an ideal basis of its own, which was less sub- 
stantial than he found it to be in his riper years. In conformity 
with the reigning character of the Society of which it was to be the 
organ, it was intended to be a Christian agency, openly and boldly 
set for the defence of all Christian virtue, but on the outside of all 
religious denominationalism strictly so called. The field of action 
professedly was "that broad territory of thought — broad enough 
surely for the putting forth of all its enterprise — on which men of 
all parties and sects, among whom the fundamental principles of pa- 
triotism and piety are not disavowed, may meet as upon common 
ground and join their efforts to do good in the exercise of the same 
mind. 

" The paper was to be decidedlr religious in its character ; and this 
on the high platform of the Gospel, the only true basis of morality ; 
but all in such a way as to avoid the incidental belligerent discords 
of the different evangelical denominations, and to move only in the 
supposed far wider and deeper sphere — something hypothetical — in 
which they are lovinglv concordant — that mighty domain of doc- 
trine and life, which has never yet been made the scene of Christian 
controversj^ at all, and over which our spirits may freely expatiate, 
in fellowship with all who belong to Christ, in the midst of the 
most magnificent and endearing forms of truth." It sounded 
strangeh^ to Dr. Xevin in after }~ears, as he says, to hear himself so 
naively proclaiming such an outside Christianity and such pseudo- 
catholicity in the first number of his paper. — We ma}' add that his 
philosophical talent, naturally of the highest order, of which he 
seemed to be unconscious for a long time at least — suppressed hy 
his morbid religious life at Schenectady and Princeton — began ap- 
parently to bud in an occasional article in the Friend, and mani- 

(68) 



Chap. VIII] the friend 09 

fested itself still more decidedly in his Address on Party Spirit, as 
we shall see hereafter. 

But with such broad idealism in the way of faith and charity, 
the Friend took upon itself at the same time to be very realistic — 
very rugged also — and very positive in the way of rebuking the 
sins of the day, and aimed to set the standard of public morals 
from the high Gospel stand-point ; but the editor could easily see, 
as he grew in grace and knowledge, that the office was not always 
exercised in the wisest and best ways. Its reformatory zeal, he 
says himself, was too self-conscious and ambitious, as is apt to be 
the case with zeal bent on magnifying its own mission in this form. 
Infidelity, fashionable amusements, ladies' fairs, theatrical enter- 
tainments, and other such objects, came under its animadversion 
in the most pronounced way, causing its boldness to be praised in 
one direction, while it gave offence, of course, in another. For 
attacking an attempt to get up a theatre- in Pittsburgh, he was 
threatened with the honor of a cow-hiding, and at one time there 
was some danger even of a mob against the paper on account of 
its supposed incendiarism on the subject of slavery. 

Of all causes, however, that of Temperance received the largest, 
share of attention ; and as the circulation of the Friend seemed 
quite too limited for its needs, especially out through the country, 
the plan was adopted finally of issuing, every two weeks, a small 
two-penny sheet, filled exclusively with this part of its material. 
This sheet was known as the Temperance Register, and during the 
brief period of its existence did its own work in its own noiseless 
and cheap way. 

As might have been expected, this whole scheme of a high-toned 
Christian monthly, based on the power of Christian ideas, supposed 
to be available for the world at large beyond the narrow pre- 
cincts of the Church, in due course of time came to general grief 
and collapse. Owing to dissatisfaction in the Society, and in the 
community on the outside, the editor felt himself compelled at 
length to withdraw from the paper, ancj his valedictory of March 
12, 1835, was a confession of defeat. Among other things, it winds 
up by saying : " We have tried our method, and are satisfied that 
it cannot carry the publication forward in this community ; it has 
been upheld thus far onfy with great sacrifices, and there is no 
prospect that it will be sustained without them hereafter. But, if 
another method can be adopted more likely to insure success, let it 
be tried — we make no sacrifice in giving up the Friend. It has 
been attended with much trouble and vexation of spirit from the 



10 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

beginning ; far more than those who have had no similar experi- 
ence can at all imagine. We have been anxiously looking forward 
to the close of our term of service as a day of deliverance and joy, 
and feel no regret at all in being discharged before the time. We 
lose no money by losing our place. We have never received a cent 
for our labor thus far, and we have not calculated on being paid 
anything at the end even of two years' full service. Here, then, 
our relations to the subscribers of the Friend must be brought to 
an end. We trust that, notwithstanding the occasion of offence 
we may have given to some, we may still have the respect and good 
will of all ; and with sentiments of corresponding regard, and the 
wishes for their prosperit} 7 on both sides of the grave, we bid them 
all an affectionate farewell." 

The " occasion of offence " referred to was found in certain brief 
items or utterances in regard to the sin of slavery, which, if the 
editor had been less honest and more worldly-wise, he would have 
been careful to keep out of his paper at the time. They roused the 
intolerance of the old pro-slavery spirit, which then reigned in 
Pittsburgh, and in many other places that were just as enlightened. 
It might have been described as " a tempest in a teapot," if it had 
not brought down upon the head of the poor unsophisticated editor 
such a torrent of abuse, suspicion and trouble of mind. This 
episode in his life is interesting as an illustration of the spirit of 
the times, and, just as well, of the spirit of the person who was de- 
termined to do right, even if the heavens should fall. 

Uncompromising opposition to slavery was a tradition in the 
Nevin family, which grew in strength and concentrated itself in 
John Williamson, its most distinguished representative. Justice 
to the memory of the man, therefore, requires that he should be 
allowed to speak for himself, and to give his own account of this 
tempest or fiasco long after he got beyond its reach. 

" On the subject of slavey," he says in 1870, "it seems to me, 
that without any material change of mind in nrvself, the weather- 
cock of public opinion has made me out wrong in different periods 
of my life, under precisely opposite views. It has done so by a 
sudden and complete polar change in itself, the full like of which it 
would be hard to find, within so short a time, in the history of the 
world before. I have been fanatically taken to task in later life for 
not cursing slavery hard enough at the altar and from the pulpit. 
In my Pittsburgh days, as already intimated, it was the other way; 
my wrong stood, it was fanatically said, in allowing myself to talk 
or write of slavery at all as a bad thing. 



Chap. VIII] a mild form of abolitionism 71 

" It was not very much at best or worst that I had to say about 
it ; I belonged to no anti-slavery society ; I was no missionary in 
the cause ; I made no speeches and disseminated no tracts in its 
favor ; indeed I openly condemned Mr. Garrison and others of the 
same stripe, as being irreligious in their spirit no less than un- 
patriotic. But I could not blind my eyes to the plain truth, into 
the sense of which I had been educated from my childhood, that 
slavery, nevertheless, as it existed in this country, was a vast moral 
evil ; and I could not see why in this view it should not come, like 
any other great wrong, under religious criticism and censure. 

"And so before I knew hardly how it came to pass, especially 
after .the publication of the Friend had come into my hands, I 
found that I had begun to be looked upon and spoken of, in certain 
quarters, as actually a disturber of the public peace. One promi- 
nent physician in the place, I remember, allowed himself publicly 
in the street to characterize me, up and down, as in his opinion 
'the most dangerous man in all Pittsburgh.' It even went so far, 
as I have said before, to some talk of danger to the office in which 
the Friend was printed. And talk in those inflammable days, it 
must be remembered, was itself very much like sparks to tinder or 
powder. It had power to produce mobs, and work tragedies in the 
most terrible way. 

" But what a farce it appears now that so much should ever have 
been made of such an occasion for offense as there was here, after 
all, in the columns of the Friend. The paper never took any party 
stand in regard to slavery one way or another; it went in favor of 
Colonization; but it was not willing that this should be allowed to 
silence the question of Home Emancipation, as in the eyes of the 
Abolitionists it seemed to be doing. There should be room, it was 
maintained, for calm and free discussion all around. Only so could 
we vindicate our title to Christian honesty in so great a case. But 
honesty of such sort was just what the communtty generally at this 
time did not want, and would not brook." The position here as- 
sumed was nothing more than what was in harmony with the Re- 
formed Faith, of which he speaks as still lingering in his youth at 
Middle Spring; and, strictly speaking, not a lesson which he had 
learned at Schenectady. It was also that which would have met 
with a response among the Germans of Pennsylvania of the Luther- 
an and Reformed persuasion, if they had had a chance to express 
themselves. Dr. Nevin was in a position to speak out, and in doing 
so he had the courage simply to define the position of many other 
good, honest people, who could not sympathize with the tide of 



72 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. Til 

fanaticism that was coming in at the time like a flood from the 
East, and from their neighbors, the Friends, around Philadelphia. 

Speaking in the Friend of April 17, 1834, of a notable move- 
ment on the subject of slaveiy, in Lane Seminary, Oxford, Ohio, 
he had no hesitation in sa3 T ing : " A grand discussion was had on 
the subject by the students of the Theological Seminary, which 
was continued for a number of evenings in succession with great 
interest, and resulted in an almost universal determination in fa- 
vor of anti-slavery principles. We have received a copy of the 
Preamble and Constitution of a society organized in this Insti- 
tution for the purpose of promoting the emancipation of the 
slaves of this country. The whole is wisely and temperately drawn 
up, and well worthy of being temperately considered. We trust 
that the time is not far distant when what has been rashly spoken 
by sortie abolitionists and colonizationists will be forgotten, and 
the friends of humanity will find themselves able to stand on com- 
mon ground in regard to the great evil of slavery, without de- 
nouncing the one interest or the other. That abolitionism has ex- 
hibited in some cases a widely extravagant form, we have no doubt ; 
but we have just as little doubt that great and powerful principles 
of truth have been all along laboring underneath its action, and 
struggling to come into clear and consistent development by its 
means. On that account we have never felt at liberty to stigma- 
tize its most active friends as being mere agitators, or to say of the 
movement, that it was in its own nature premature and desperate, 
or incendiary in its character. Let the subject be discussed. The 
discussion will cause some great truths to be more clearly appre- 
hended, at any rate, than they have been heretofore. 

" Take another example of my incendiarism from the Friend, 
Sept. 4, 1834. ' Among the various able articles that have appeared 
lately on the subject of slavery, Judge Birney's letter to the secre- 
tary of the Kentuck}^ Colonization Societ}- is deserving of special 
attention. The eminent station, distinguished talents, the truly 
Christian character of the writer entitle it to the calm and dispas- 
sionate consideration of all who claim to be the friends of truth 
and free inquiry. It will be hard to fasten on him at least the re- 
proach of fanaticism and madness. He is found in the midst of 
slavery itself the uncompromising advocate of immediate emanci- 
pation, and declares, in strong though respectful terms, his persua- 
sion, based on a wide extent of observation, that colonization, as 
now urged, is unfriendly to the interest. We beg leave to recom- 
mend that this letter be read by such as can get hold of it, in con- 



Chap. Till] a parthian arrow IS 

nection with other documents that relate to the slavery question. 
We think that this is a subject about which people ought to read 
and have an intelligent opinion. We envy not the state of that 
man's mind, who counts it as credit to himself to be indifferent or 
apathetic in a case which involves the happiness of two millions of 
his fellow beings ; and the moral character, if not the political des- 
tiny, of the entire nation to which he belongs. The time is coming 
when such as now evince this temper will be ashamed to have it 
remembered ; especially when it may have been connected, as it 
sometimes is, with an attempt to discourage free discussion and 
earnest inquiry among others.' 

" Let these quotations suffice as specimens simply of my way of 
preaching abolitionism at this time. There was certainly nothing 
very dreadful about it ; it sounds now in all conscience quite tame 
enough. But it fell very differently on the ears of the prudent 
ones in the years of grace 1834 and 1835. Judge Birney was held to 
be a traitor to good manners and the peace of his country. The 
Lane Seminary students were denounced as in a high degree dis- 
orderly ; and in due course of things, as I have stated, I was forced 
to resign my editorial position as a martyr to conscience and the 
freedom of speech — but not without this Parthian arrow in my 
retreating farewell. 

" We think it well enough here to leave our testimony, solemn 
and explicit, in favor of the truth, in this great interest. Slavery 
is a sin, as it exists in this country, and as such it ought to be 
abolished. There is no excuse for its being continued a single 
day. The whole nation is involved in the guilt of it, so long 
as public sentiment acquiesces in it as a necessary evil. That 
which is absolutely necessary for its removal, is the formation of 
such a public sentiment throughout the country, as will make slave- 
holders ashamed of their wickedness, and finally reform the laws 
under which the evil now holds its power in the different States. - 
Such a sentiment has not heretofore existed, and it is plain that 
much discussion and thought are needed to bring it into being. 
There is, therefore, just the same reason for the system of action 
pursued by the Abolition Society with reference to this subject, that 
there is for the Temperance Society, with regard to the curse of 
ardent spirits. The institution and the effort are among the noblest 
forms of benevolent action witnessed in the present age. We glory 
then in being an abolitionist, and count it all honor to bear reproach 
for such a cause. It is the cause of God, and it will prevail. 

u It has prevailed within the last year, more we believe, than ever 
5 



74 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

a moral cause did before in this country within the same time. An 
immense change has been effected by means of it through almost 
e^ery portion of the Northern States, and we are evidently on the 
eve of greater changes still. The tongue of slander is fast coming 
to be ashamed of its own calumnies ; and already that which was 
stigmatized as 'fanaticism and incendiarism' a year since, is begin- 
ning to stand forth with honor in the world as the righteousness of 
the Bible and the everlasting truth of Grod. We are no longer at a 
loss either on the subject of Colonization. We believe fulry that 
as the case now stands, the one interest is contrary to the other ; 
just as moderate drinking societies are at war with the temperance 
reformation ; and with Judge Birney we have no doubt, that the 
cause of emancipation, in order to succeed, must be divorced al- 
together from the whole plan of colonizing the blacks, as heretofore 
and at present pursued for that purpose. The S} T stem is injurious, 
as it tends to divert attention from the true question in the case, 
and lends its influence also to sustain a most foolish and wicked 
prejudice against the colored population. 

" Such is our creed on this deeply interesting subject, on which 
all must think before long; a subject which, if not disposed of 
quickly by the power of conscience and moral principle, will } r et 
convulse the nation, North and South, to its very centre." — The 
Friend, March 12, 1835. 

No one of our readers can fail to see the appropriateness of these 
solemn words of warning, bordering on the prophetic, which the 
editor addressed to his brethren, when as } T et comparatively few of 
that generation imagined that the}^ were standing over a volcano, 
which in a quarter of a century was in fact to " convulse the nation, 
North and South." To us at the present chry it appears greatly to 
the credit of the governing powers of the Western Theological 
Seminary, that the} r did not allow themselves to be unduly excited 
in regard to the member of the Faculty that seemed to be intro- 
ducing new doctrines ; and that they laid no restraint upon him 
and uttered no caveat with regard to the slavey agitation. The 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism showed itself here to be of a much 
more tolerant and self-possessed spirit than the Presb3 T terianism, 
"which sought to turn Lane Seminaiy at Cincinnati into a medieval 
inquisition." 

But such intolerance was to a great extent the order of the day. 
The Presb3 T terian like most other churches in this country was 
rather conservative on the subject of slavery, and somewhat disin- 
clined to encourage its free ventilation. All felt that it was an ex- 



Chap. YIII] justified by events T5 

ceedingly difficult and delicate question to discuss in existing cir- 
cumstances. It had a political as well as a religious and moral 
side. " The subject came to be tabooed from the pulpit and the 
press. The leading Presb3 r terian organs were of one mind and 
one voice — hostile in full to the technical abolitionism, or the so- 
called Anti-slavery movement of the da} r . Ecclesiastical judica- 
tories, as well as the great national societies, made it a point from 
year to year to ostracise and put down in all manners and ways 
every attempt to get the matter of slavery before them. It was a 
spectre that haunted them yearly, and when driven out of one door 
it was sure to come in through another. The merest whisper of 
abolitionism was enough to throw a whole General Assembly into 
agitation." 

A curious illustration of this extreme nervousness was evoked 
among its Commissioners when it met in Pittsburgh, just opposite 
Allegheny, in 1835, of which Professor Nevin himself was the inno- 
cent occasion. During its session a meeting was appointed in one 
of the large Methodist Churches to hear Dr. Birney on the question 
of slavery, and he was invited to appear also as a speaker. In his 
frame of mind at the time, he of course did not feel at liberty to 
decline the invitation. But before the meeting was held he was 
waited upon by a committee of friends, representing, as they said, 
the general mind of the Assembly, who begged him for its sake not 
to appear as a speaker on the occasion. Although he was not a 
member of the Assembly, it was alleged that his public appearance 
at such a meeting, just at that time, might in some wa}^ seem to be 
injurious to its honor. In the circumstances he meekly yielded to 
their request, in compliance with a good old Presbyterian rule, that 
ministers ought to submit themselves to their brethren. It is only 
one instance, in which General Assemblies and man}^ other assem- 
blies showed how sensitively alive they were in those days, even 
at insignificant points, to the serenity of their standing conserva- 
tism on this great question of slaveiy. 

Of course such a nervous state of the public mind is now hap- 
pity changed, and the old conservatism during the late war lost its 
occupation and went to the wall. Providence brought it about. 
The smouldering fires, which had been in a measure concealed for 
more than half of a century, burst through all artificial restraints, 
and the explosions became so much the more violent and destruct- 
ive, because they had not been able to find any proper vent. Had 
the North and the South met together, and with the help of a few 
of their wisest matrons made a child's bargain, they would have 



76 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

saved themselves a vast amount of trouble, treasure, and man}- 
valuable lives. When, however, the war actually brofce out, men of 
all classes had to think. The two Presb3 T terian Assemblies, Old 
and ]S~ew School, and other religious bodies, always more or less 
opposed to slavery, now more than ever before, were united in their 
opposition to it, and nobby stepped forward and sustained the gen- 
eral government in what they believed to be the cause of righteous- 
ness and truth. — John Williamson, the son of John Nevin of Her- 
ron's Branch, had been opposed to slavery from his } T outh, and in 
1835 he was at least thirty years in advance of the times. That is 
all that there is about his kind of abolitionism. 

There was one other passage in the life of Dr. Nevin at Alle- 
gheny, which was as satisfactory to himself afterwards as it must 
be to all intelligent readers at the present time. It had reference 
to the ecclesiastical division of the Presbyterian Church in 1837, 
which met with his open and unqualified dissent. It was his first 
earnest testimon3 T against schism in the Body of Christ, and it was 
as sincere and earnest as those which followed, in his subsequent 
career, of which the reader will be duly apprized in the present 
volume. 



CHAPTER IX 

PROFESSOR NEVIN, not as yet a Doctor of Divinity, had 
charge of Biblical Literature in the Seminary, and was not 
required to give special attention to dogmatic theology in his de- 
partment ; but his reading of theological works, mostly for spiritual 
edification, had been extensive, and his judgment on doctrinal 
points was quite equal to that of his seniors, the learned Doctors 
who figured in the famous controversy between the Old and New 
Schools. Very naturally his theological sympathies all along went 
with the Old School, but he was clear-headed enough to see that 
there was truth also on the other side. He also had the feeling at 
the same time, that the controversy in certain quarters on his 
own side was urged forward in an extreme way. Its orthodoxy 
was stiff, rigid and altogether too literal and mechanical. Moreover, 
he had by this time mastered the German language, and had held 
communion with some of the great theologians of Germany. The 
reading of Meander's Church History had made an impression on 
his mind and given him some idea of history and the progressive 
advancement of the kingdom of God on earth. All this was op- 
posed to the theology of the letter, or of mere dead tradition, and 
suggested to his mind the idea of a theology of the spirit that ad- 
mitted of spiritual growth and enlargement. 

He, therefore, took no prominent part in the heated doctrinal dis-j 
cussions of the day that were then raging around him in his own j 
church. The time for the exercise of his talents in this direction 
had not yet arrived. He looked at the situation rather in its bear- 
ings on Christian charity and the growth of godliness in the 
churches. With a certain feeling of self-respect and independence,! 
he deprecated the idea that the Pittsburgh S}mod should be dra- 
gooned to take part in the Eastern quarrel with regard to Mr. 
Barnes; and he went so far as to urge seriously through the Chris- 
tian Herald the plan of relatively independent Synodical jurisdic- 
tion, proposed by Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton. Then, 
of course, when the rupture came, it was against his mind and judg- 
ment, although he had no difficulty about accepting it as an accom- 
plished fact, and remaining with the division to which he in truth 
belonged. But when it became an object afterwards to engage the 
Presbyteries to a formal endorsement of the decisive action of the 



18 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

General Assembly, he felt it necessar} T to guard against committing 
himself even indirectly to anything of the sort, and he had the 
courage to do so conscientiously. It was one of those questions, 
as he believed, that tried men's souls, although it probably troubled 
onl} T the smaller part of the brethren in the Presb3 T teries. This, 
however, was not, by any means, the case with the Professor at 
Allegheny. 

The Presbytery of Ohio had passed several resolutions, endor- 
sing the action of the General Assembly in splitting the Church, 
regarding it as a cause of " special gratitude to the Great Head of 
the Church for the wisdom and firmness of the fathers and brethren 
in devising those measures, which were believed to be conducive 
to the promotion and security of the unitj^, peace, and all the great 
interests of our beloved Zion." When the vote was taken there 
were thirty-eight ayes, two non liquets, and ten nays, of which last 
Prof. Kevin's vote was one. 

At -a meeting in the following year, June, 1838, another crucial 
question came up, called an " adhering act," declaring the allegi- 
ance of the Presbj'teiy to the Old School General Assembbr as the 
true successo?* of the Presbj'terian Church — unchurching, as he 
thought, the Xew School brethren in effect — with something like a 
salvo, conceding the orthodox}^ of those of its members, who had 
refused to endorse in all respects what had been done, ending with 
an expression of thanks for the otherwise harmony of the Presby- 
tery. 

The dissenters of the previous year for the most part were willing 
to let this pass as being in itself all that the case required ; but the 
Professor felt that something more was needed to put the matter, 
so far as he was concerned, beyond all possible future misconstruc- 
tion ; and at a subsequent meeting of the Presbyte^ he, therefore, 
asked the privilege of having recorded, in the minutes of the bod} r , 
a distinct explanation of the sense of his vote in the act of adhe- 
sion. As he had had one whole year to consider the matter, this was 
not the result of a mere impulse but of mature reflection. The pa- 
per was signed by three other members of the body and allowed to 
be put on record in the proceedings of the Presbj T tery, and is here 
given as throwing light on the character and spirit of its author, 
just about one year before he was called to a new sphere of labor at 
Mercersburg. 

" To prevent misunderstanding, the undersigned, members of the 
Presbytery of Ohio, ask respectfully to have it entered upon record, 
that in participating in the ' adhering act ' of last June, they intended 



Chap. IX] dogmatic slumbers T9 

simply to make their election between the two ecclesiastical bodies 
into which the Church has been split, and nothing more. If the 
act in question be supposed to involve necessarily the idea of sub- 
scription to the claims of the Old School Assembty to be the onl}^ 
true and lawful successor of the Presbyterian Church in this coun- 
try, they must disclaim it altogether. In the present state of the 
Church they dare not make the constitutional existence of either 
Assembly an article of faith either for themselves or for others. The 
question of legitimate succession in this case is the one they do not 
choose to decide, or to impose as a test of ecclesiastical standing in 
any way. On this broad platform only they have adhered, and 
they still agree to adhere, with a good conscience and in good faith, 
to the General Assembly under whose banner the Presbytery of 
Ohio has taken its stand." 

The allowance of this record on the part of the Presbytery was 
regarded b}^ Professor Nevin as a favor which deserved his thanks 
at the time, and it became a pleasure to him afterwards to call it 
thankfully to mind. " Some of my brethren," he says, in 18 TO, " I 
well know, considered me somewhat wilfully scrupulous in the case ; 
but I value the record now more than ever, since the two sides of 
the Church have come together again, as showing that I at least 
' never consented to the counsel and deed of them ' — now mostly 
silent in death or otherwise — who thirty years ago tore the body 
so ruthlessly in twain. For what less has this coming together 
again of the two bodies been than a general confession all around 
that there was no sufficient occasion originally for the breach, and 
that as an article of faith neither of the two assemblies ever was, or 
could be in fact, the only true and lawful successor of the Presby- 
terian Church in this country to the exclusion of the other." 

During the ten years in the theological school at Allegheny, Dr. 
Nevin made considerable progress in his religious and theological 
life. At that time he was by no means just what he had been in 
theology when he left Princeton. Although surrounded by influ- 
ences at Pittsburgh to keep him stationary, in the traces of an old\ 
and rigid Calvinistic orthodoxy, he was gradually coming to out-j 
live it. This advancement he was pleased to style, in 18*70, his 
"historical awakening," because it brought him to a proper sense 
of History in general, and Church History in particular. It was 
the beginning of a new era in his life, which turned out to be a 
valuable providential preparation for his subsequent work in 
another sphere of labor, and we therefore proceed to narrate how 
it was Jbrought about, using for the most part his own words. 



80 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

The influence, which helped to enlarge the horizon of his relig- 
ious thinking at this time, came from the new light that began to 
dawn upon his mind in regard to the true nature and the vast sig- 
nificance of the history of the Christian Church. As he had stud- 
ied it at Princeton, he says, it was for him the poorest sort of sa- 
cred science. There was, in truth, no real science about it in the 
proper sense of the word; and to his mind, as he dryly remarks, 
its associations could hardly be called sacred, as the}' certainly 
were not particularly edifying in an}' way. The whole subject, 
however, began to appear gradually under a higher and better view, 
like the dawn of a new day, through his acquaintance with the 
father of Church History, the vastly learned and profoundly pious 
Dr. Augustus Neander. What he was for Germany on a large 
scale, that he became to the Presbyterian Professor in America also 
in a large degree, forming an epoch, a grand crisis or turning point 
in his life — as Xeander would say — followed by a new order of 
mental and spiritual development. 

His magic wand served to bring up the dead past before him, in 
the form of a living present. History became in his hand like Eze- 
kiel's vision of the valley of dry bones, where bone sought out his 
bone, and sinews and flesh and skin came over them, and breath came 
into them, so that in the end "they lived and stood upon their feet, 
an exceedingly great army." With all his ungainliness of manner 
and style, he was more to his American pupil than the great British 
"Wizard of the North." He caused Church History to become for 
him like the creations of poetry and romance. How much he owed 
to him in the way of excitement, impulse, suggestion, knowledge, 
literary and religious, reaching into his life, was more, he says, 
than he could pretend to explain ; as it was more, in fact, perhaps, 
than he was able satisfactorily to trace or understand. 

He informs us that his knowledge of the great historian was at 
first indirect onfy and through outward report. He had heard of 
him only by the hearing of the ear. But even that had an awaken- 
ing effect ; and it then became with him an object and concern to 
know him for himself. Primarily it was just for this purpose that 
he undertook to study the German language ; and just as soon as 
he was able to read it in a stumbling way, he began to wrestle with 
the loose, inharmonious periods of Xeander. The first German 
book of any account which he read was his Geist des Tertullians, 
the monogram in which he calls up this fiery African father from 
the dead, and causes him to walk the earth again in living, intelli- 
gible form. It was no longer the Tertullian, which he and others 



Chap. IX] church history 81 

had known spectrally before, the Tertnllian of Mosheim, whose 
claims to be considered a real Christian appeared to be of an ex- 
tremely doubtful character; but Tertullian, in propria persona, who 
was now allowed to speak for himself, and to reveal from the depths 
his own impetuous, but at the same time most earnest religious life. 

Afterwards he took up the " General History of the Christian 
Religion and Church " by his new teacher, and under his guidance 
renewed his acquaintance with the first Christian ages, where all had 
been for him before such a wilderness of dreary disorder and con- 
fusion. Here now all seemed to put on a new form, and to be 
lighted up with a new sense. Not that there was a full end of ob- 
scurities, or perplexities, b}^ any means. There was enough still 
of both, but even these were not the same as before. They be- 
longed to a living concrete existence, and not to a world of dead 
unmeaning shadows. They were problems in what was felt to be 
a real past, answerable to the sense of the real present. Alto- 
gether the old ecclesiastical life was made to reproduce itself from 
its own ground and in its own proper form. 

" I became reconciled," he says, " to the old Christian fathers 
generally. They were no longer to me the puzzling mysteries they 
had been before. I learned to understand them in a measure — their 
inward spirit, and outward voice — each man speaking not in my 
Puritanic Presbyterian tongue, but in his own tongue wherein he 
was born ; and it was a pleasure, as well as a great edification, to 
become acquainted with them in this way. The more I knew of 
them thus, the more they rose in my reverence and regard. They 
stood to me indeed still environed with much that I took to be 
wrong, and contradictory to the true sense of Christianity both in 
doctrine and in life. But this too I learned to estimate from the 
circumstances of their place and time; and so that was not allowed 
to blind me to their substantial worth. 

" Even the old Christian heresies were made to partake in the 
general benefit of this historical illumination. They appeared no 
longer as the freaks of brainless folly, or diabolical madness. There 
seemed to be both meaning and method in their rise and progress. 
They had an inward, we might say, necessary connection with the 
history of the Church; and there could be, it was clearly shown, no 
right understanding of Christianity and the Church, or the onward 
progress of the mystery of godliness in the world, without an in- 
sight, at the same time, into the interior nature of its counterpart 
and contradiction, the mystery of iniquity working from the begin- 
ning in this bad way. There was deep historical meaning, under 



82 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. YII 

such view, in Ebionism and Gnosticism, in Montanism, in Sabel- 
lianism and Arianism, in Manicheism and Pelagianism, no less 
than in the different tendences and schools of the orthodox Chris- 
tian faith itself. What a perfect bedlam, in particular, the old 
Gnostic sects had been previously for my mind ! But now, even 
they began to take intelligible shape and fall into line ; and what 
was chaos rose into a world of at least comparative order and light, 
full of profound instruction, and worthy of diligent study for all 
following times. 

"I do not wish to be understood, of course, as bestowing on 
Neander unmeasured or unqualified praise. He was but the pioneer 
in the new order of ecclesiastical history, with which his name is 
identified, and he left room enough for others, who have followed 
him in his course, to do better in some respects than himself. His 
faults and defects are now generally admitted. They grew in a 
measure out of his position, and the reigning character of his own 
religion, and have a close connection with what are otherwise the 
positive merits and charms of his great work, being in part at least, 
one might say, those peculiarities carried to a sort of sickly and 
feeble excess." 

Dr. Nevin's own judgment of Neander was well expressed by that 
of another, and he therefore quoted it as expressing his own. " This 
noble monument of sanctified learning," says Dr. Schaff, his disci- 
ple and now world-famous co-worker in the same branch of science 
(see his Tract, What is Church History, page 79), "is without 
question the most important product of the modern German the- 
ology in the sphere of Church History, and must long maintain a 
high authority. At the same time, it is not to be denied, that in 
point of church character it is no longer fully up to the demands 
of the time. Meander occupies still the ground of Schleiermacher 
in this respect, that the church spirit appears with him under a too 
indefinite form, and in its general character in too much of a mere 
feeling of religious communion. Hence his aversion to a pointedly 
distinct orthodoxy, and his partiality towards all free dissenting 
tendencies. Since the Reformation Jubilee of 1817, however, the 
evangelical theology of Germany has taken a strong and con- 
stantly growing church direction, which will give character, no 
doubt, also more and more to the future. To be all that is now 
required, therefore, a Church Histoiy should unite a proper har- 
mony, a thorough use of original sources, clear apprehension, or- 
ganic development, and graphic delineation, together with decided 
though broad church feeling, and the power of true Christian edifi- 



Chap. IX] an historical awakening 83 

cation. It may be long, perhaps, before we possess a work that 
shall satisf}^ equally all these requirements. Still, the elements 
which it calls for are all actually at hand in the different activities 
of theological learning. The material is ready ; so is also the plans 
of the edifice, in its main outline ; only the master hand is waited 
for, which will put the parts together and cause the work to stand 
forth to the view of the world as a complete, harmonious and mag- 
nificent whole." 

"My obligations were great to Neander, as a simple teacher of 
common historical knowledge, as an expositor of ecclesiastical facts 
and details. But I owed him much more than this. As Kant says 
somewhere of the influence the philosophical writings of David 
Hume had upon him, so I may say in all truth of the new views of 
history set before me by Neander — ' they broke up my dogmatic 
slumbers.' They were for me an actual awakening of the soul, 
which went far beyond any direct instruction involved in it, and 
the force of which was by no means confined to the theological 
sphere with which it was immediately concerned, but made itself 
profoundly felt also in the end on my whole theological and relig- 
ious life. 

" Not to be more particular, it was much to be put merely in the- 
way of seeing what History properly means, under the view of an ob- 
jective movement, determined by its forces towards its own heaven- 
appointed end — much to be brought to the feeling that there is a 
divinity even in profane histoiy which shapes it eveiywhere to the 
service of a divine universal plan ; but still more, to feel this as 
true of the history of God's Hoty Catholic Church, in a sense funy 
answerable to the great promise of Jesus to His Church : ' The gates 
of hell shall not prevail against it. Lo, I am with you alway, even 
to the end of the world.' There is, therefore, no part of a true 
liberal culture in any form, which is more important than such 
power of seeing and feeling the significance of the historical element 
in all human existence. There can be no right knowledge of the 
world, and no right standing or working in the world without it. 
Before my acquaintance with Neander, it seems to me now, looking 
back upon nry life, that this sense of the historical was something 
which I could hardly be said to have possessed at all. But since 
then it has come to condition all my views of life. I do not mean 
to say that it became all at once to be of such force for me through 
Neander's teachiug. It was an idea or sentiment which grew, and 
took upon it full form, only in the course of subsequent 37ears; but 
to him, I owe it first of all that any such idea began to dawn upon 



84: AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

my mind. He first gave rue the feeling, in some measure, of what 
history means for the life of the world everywhere, and most of all 
in the ruling central sphere of religion. 

" It was an advantage at the same time to be now also introduced 
to Grieseler's great work in the same department of learning. I 
found him to be much less interesting than Neander, and of a very 
different spirit. It is well known that the main value of his work 
lies not in his own very brief text, which is rationalistically cold 
and dry, but in the full extracts from original authorities with 
which the text is accompanied in the way of notes. These are 
selected with great care, fine judgment, and impartial honest}' ; and 
make it possible for the reader to construe facts for himself, at least 
in a general way, as the truth may be felt to require. In this view, 
his history falls in well with that of Xeander, and the two can, as 
they should, be studied profitably together ; a much more effectual 
combination of learning and faith than that which I had been able 
to reach in earlier 3^ears, b} T trying to supplement and sanctify 
Mosheim through the judicious use of Joseph Milnor. 

"When Dr. Halse}' withdrew from the Seminary in 183Y, as the 
waj T was not open for the appointment of a new professor in his 
•place, it became necessary for me to widen the range of my teach- 
ing, so as to include in it Church Histoiy also, along with the studies 
belonging previously to my proper department. This brought me 
into still closer connection with the science, and maj T have increased 
nry interest in it to some extent ; but so far as I can remember it 
did not amount to very much. My teaching was more mechanical 
than independent and free. I did not feel at liberty to attempt any 
material innovation on the course of instruction, as it had stood 
before, and held nyself to Mosheim as a text book according to the 
fashion which then prevailed in our American schools of divinity 
generally. In those days there was no help for this am^where. 
The time had not come for it to be otherwise. 

" I will not pretend to particularize," the Professor goes on to say, 
" the points in which my general doctrinal theolog}' was affected 
by the practical hermeneutical and historical experiences of which 
I have now spoken. What has been said is sufficient to show how 
different influences and tendencies wrought in my mind at this time 
towards the production of a common spiritual movement, and also 
to make it plain in what direction that movement prevailingly lay. 
It had for its scope and aim — though more in the way of uncon- 
scious divination than in the way of clear open reflection — the right 
adjustment of the objective and subjective sides of Christianity , its 



Chap. IX] self-criticism . 85 

supernatural substance and its natural form, in their relation to 
each other ; and there belonged to it also throughout an inward 
determination towards Christ, as offering in the constitution of His 
own person the only proper solution for the problem. In other 
words, the course in which my religious life and theology lay was 
of one order with that more decided Christological tendenc} 7- , which 
came to prevail more fully in later years ; and to which alone, more 
fully than to any other cause, I owe whatever of peculiarity may 
seem to have attached itself to my theological views. It is just 
here that the key to my whole religious history lies. All along it 
has been a movement in the same direction ; a movement away from 
the simply subjective in religion towards the supernatural objec- 
tive ; from the spiritually abstract, as I look at it, to the historic- 
ally concrete ; and from the Gnostically ideal to the Christologi- 
cally real. In its hidden inmost meaning, it imvy be considered as 
a progressive turning of the soul throughout to Him who stood in 
vision before St. John, when he was in the Spirit on the Lord's 
Day in the isle that is called Patmos — the Alpha and Omega, the 
Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, Which was dead 
and is alive again, Which is, and Which was, and Which is to come, 
the Almight}^, the Amen, the Faithful and true Witness, the Begin- 
ning of the Creation of God, with Whom are the Keys of Death 
and Hades." 

Dr. Nevin's theological status, therefore, in 1840, was an evident 
advance on the position he occupied previously in 1830 when he 
entered upon his duties at Allegheny ; in some respects it may be 
truly said to have been a material advance. But afterwards, in his 
retrospective view of himself, it did not, in fact, amount to much. 
The old defects were still present in his theological thinking, and 
therefore made themselves felt, in a greater or less degree, in all 
his preaching, teaching and working. What he had gained was 
more of a reaching after truth in the right direction than a full 
comprehension of it, or coming up to it in its own proper form. 
He read other German authors, especially those who wrote in Latin, 
such as Ernesti, De Wette, Rosenmueller, Gesenius, Kuinoel, and 
others, some of whom like Ernesti, with Andover Seminary and 
other high authorities, he regarded as sound and orthodox, but 
afterwards discovered that they were considerably more rationalis- 
tic than evangelical. 

One proof of his defect in this respect, which he gives himself 
with much candor and simplicity, and with some appearance ot 
naivete, was the fact that he had not yet — after so long a time and 



86 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1833-18 ±0 [DlV. YII 

so much study — learned to make any proper account of the Apos- 
tles' Creed. As this had nothing to do either with his religion or 
theolog} T during all the time he had been at Princeton, so it had 
just as little to do with them during his ten years' connection with 
the Western Seminary. Like himself neither of his colleagues, 
Halsey or Elliott, felt it to be any part of their business as Profes- 
sors in the Institution to teach the Creed or in any way to build 
their divinity upon it, or to make any use of it whatever for the 
purpose of Christian worship. There was not a single occasion, 
on which any one of them ever thought it needful or advisable to 
repeat it, or even to appeal to it reverentially as the common pro- 
fession of our " undoubted Christian faith." It was no better with 
the old-fashioned orthodoxy of the churches generally, whether in 
the city or country, as a matter of course, and in faci it had no 
room for the actual use of the Creed. If the venerable symbol 
belonged to it, in any other wa} T , it was only as the '" fossil relic 
of by -gone ages." 

Dr. Nevin affirms that he had never heard it from a Presb3 T terian 
altar or pulpit ; and that he had never dreamed of making it any 
part of his own ministration in the sanctuary — not even out at 
Braddock's Field, where it would have been so eas} T to bring it into 
full devotional use. Presbj^terianism in those daj T s, whatever ma} T 
be the case at present, had little or no heart for the Apostles 1 Creed, 
and the introduction of it anywhere into the worship of the 
churches would have been most probably censured as an unpardon- 
able innovation. And yet, as all the world knows, the formula is 
acknowledged in the Westminster Confession of Faith, although 
unfortunately left out of the Shorter Catechism. 

In the Heidelberg Catechism, on the other hand, not long since 
approved by the Presbyterian General Assembly for the instruction 
of the young, it constitutes a large part of its contents, which is 
significant, as it virtually affirms the sj-mbolical authority of the 
Creed on which the Catechism, like Calvin's Institutes, is based. 
In the Reformed and Lutheran Churches the youth at an early age 
became familiar with the Creed as the}' learned it out of their cate- 
chisms, and in some families at least, as they were accustomed to 
repeat it at night in connection with their prayers. The youngest 
and the most tender branches in the house learned it by hearing 
their older brothers or sisters reciting it nightly, after they had 
fairly mastered for themselves the Lord's Prayer. The probability 
is that neither Dr. Nevin at Pittsburgh, nor man}- other Presbyte- 
rian divines, if the}' had been called upon to repeat it from the pul- 



Chap. IX] defects Si 

pit, would have been able to have gone through with it without 
stumbling, or travestying it from beginning to end. 

With such want of power to appreciate the Creed on Dr. Nevin's 
part, there must have been necessarily a corresponding want of 
power also to do full justice to the view of religion generally, in 
which it finds its proper home. His hermeneutical and historical 
enlargement, whatever that may have been, had not brought with 
it to him as yet any proper apprehension of what may be denomi- 
nated the churchly and sacramental side of Christianity, without 
which the sense of its objective presence in the world must always 
be, as with Schleiermacher — more or less sentimental and vague. 
There was, therefore, a large part of the New Testament, in this 
view, that was not allowed in his mind, as he frankly admits, to 
come to its full and fair meaning, which, as it were, was crowded 
out of sight all the time by the stress of what was held to be the 
plain meaning of another part of it. For the same reason there 
was also a want with him of true catholic freedom in estimating the 
significance of historical forms and modes of church life differing 
from his own, more especially where they had to do with the realis- 
tic side of religion at what seemed to be the cost of its spiritualis- 
tic side. 

Looking at the matter in this light, he honestly acknowledges, as 
facts showed, that he saw in the forms of the Roman Church itself 
as a matter of course, as well as in its theory of the Gospel in gen- 
eral, only gross superstitions throughout, and the most stupid want 
of common sense. Old Lutheranism, too, in his eyes was not very 
much better ; the wonder with him simply being how such respect- 
able Lutheranism as that represented by the General Synod and its 
institutions at Gettysburg, Pa., could so cling as it did to a title, 
which no longer expressed in any way its true faith. Neither could 
he see anything great or good in the Episcopal Church, except 
what it might have in its forms of religious character, which seemed 
to be in it by mistake, belonging in truth to a different order of 
church life. The Low Church party, accordingly, were held to be 
in the right as against the High Church party; they had with them 
all the evangelical piety of the body, so far as there was any such 
piety at all in it ; but then they were in a false position throughout, 
which it was impossible to look upon with any sort of sincere 
respect. The distinctive spirit of Episcopy was held to belong 
altogether to the other side ; and this seemed to be a species of 
judicial blindness only, given up full}' to the service of lies instead 
of the truth. The Oxford Tractarian movement, in particular, was 



88 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. YII 

regarded with pity and contempt, and the title of Newmania, 
stupidly applied to it by some, was considered as a pun, not alto- 
gether void of propriety and good common sense. 

And yet, Dr. Nevin assures us that his first glimpse of what the 
church spirit really meant, was obtained unexpected^ from look- 
ing into a volume of the Oxford Tracts, which a friend had bought, 
and, after finding them to be dry and tiresome reading, passed them 
over into his hands. He was not converted, it is true, in any sense 
to the views of the book. But he saw — what he had not imagined 
or believed before — that there was deep, intelligent conviction at 
work in the Oxford movement ; that the men concerned in it were 
neither Irypocrites nor visionaries ; and there flashed upon his mind, 
at the same time, some sense of the profoundly earnest religious 
problem with which they were wrestling and in their way endeavor- 
ing to solve. That was all. But where he then stood, this was, in 
the way of seed-thought, a great deal in the circumstances. 

Thus far we have made use of Dr. Nevin's own account of his 
life, inward and outward, but here the autobiography suddenly 
breaks off, and it was never finished, as he hoped it might be. Here- 
after, therefore, we must continue his record, not as made in his 
own words ; but as written upon the Church by his works and 
words. In connection with the story of his " Own Life," until he 
emerged from Pittsburgh, he wrote out a pretty extended critique 
of his faith at that time as compared with what it was thirty years 
afterwards; but as that shows the progress he had made during 
that interval and the more settled convictions, religious and theo- 
logical, to which he had then attained, we hold it in reserve until 
we come to it in chronological order in 1810. 

As Dr. Nevin was not entirely stationary nor merely hybernating 
on his father's farm or at Princeton, but gradually growing in wis- 
dom and strength, so it was with him at the Western Seminary, 
and in fact much more so. What would have become of him, or 
what he would have done with himself, had he remained at Pitts- 
burgh, it is now impossible for any one to say ; but it is not likely 
that in his own church and in his own surroundings, he would 
have enjoj^ecl the same theological freedom, which he came to enjo} T 
elsewhere, for what he regarded as his own peculiar growth and 
enlargement. Possibly he would have made comparatively little 
advancement in his life, or if there had been airy at all, it would 
have been something abnormal and morbid rather than catholic 
and free. In this Pittsburgh stadium of his life he had fairly set 
out on his theological pilgrimage, little knowing or dreaming at 



Chap. IX] reminiscences 89 

the time through what waves of inward conflict and outward con- 
tradiction it was to lead him in after years. The part of his 
journey over which he had already travelled was not destined to 
represent its character as a whole. It brought out only one side 
of it, and that by no means the side which was destined to be the 
broadest and the most fruitful in the end. It was only with a part 
of his being that he stood — rather uneasily — in the Ernestian, or as 
we may say, in the Andoverian order of thought. There was an- 
other part of his being, that had been exercised all along in various 
ways against it and that had refused to acknowledge its authorit}^. 
This had been growing and gathering strength in its own way, until 
at last in the course of } T ears it mastered the whole movement to 
which it belonged, and gave it a character just the opposite of 
what it seemed to have at the first. The movement, nevertheless, 
was intrinsically one, and in its main meaning harmonious with 
itself throughout. What proved to be the ultimate scope of it in 
truth, God so ordering, was, in fact, the real sense of it from the 
beginning. There was here a genetic process or growth, and it is 
the privilege no less than the comfort of faith to believe that it was 
directed b}^ a higher than human wisdom. But this growth or 
spiritual development could be made much better in another sphere 
and a different atmosphere. The change was made not by a vision, 
as when ^Eneas was told by his wife's pale shade to leave Troy and 
seek a new home in Italy, but by clear indications of Providence, 
wherelry our theological pilgrim, as he says, was lifted up as it 
were by the Almighty hand of God itself from the place where he. 
stood, and transplanted into an altogether different world. — He I 
received the degree of D.D. from Jefferson College, Pa., in 1839, j 
and that of LL.D. from Union College in 18t3. 

Just as we had finished our review of Dr. Nevin's life at Pitts- 
burgh we received the following letter from the Rev. Alfred Nevin, 
D.D., LL.D., in which he gives his early recollections and impressions 
of Dr. Nevin, which we gladly insert at this place. Our readers as 
well as the author of this volume will doubtless thank him for this 
interesting sketch of his theological teacher: 

Rev. Theodore Appel, D.D. Dear Brother: It gives me very 
great pleasure to comply with your request for some reminiscences 
of my distinguished kinsman, the Rev. J. W. Nevin, D.D., LL.D., 
with the preparation of whose biography you have been happily 
entrusted. These reminiscences will mainly cover the period of my 
student life in the Western Theological Seminary at Allegheirv, 
6 



90 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. YII 

from 183t to 1840, during which he filled one of the chairs in that 
Institution. 

Dr. Xevin had made a near approach to the meridian of his 
strength and influence. He was a most diligent student and his 
growing acquirements, added to the vast scholarship which he had 
brought with him to his important position, gave him a literary 
reputation which it is the privilege of but few men to obtain. 
Even in his walk along the streets of the cit} T , he carried with him 
an air of elevation and abstraction which indicated the high regions 
of research, reflection and aspiration in which he was accustomed 
to move. All who knew him, and there were not many to whom he 
was a stranger, either through the pulpit or the press, regarded him 
as a thesaurus of learning, especially in the Scientia scientiarum, 
which treats of God, of His character, His attributes, government 
and relations to our race. 

I was for some months a member of Dr. Nevin's family, and 
thus had an opportunity of judging him in that sphere, which, be- 
cause of its exemption from outside observation and restraints, is 
the best test of character. In the domestic circle he was, though 
affable and kind, generally dignified and silent in his manner. He 
had the grace of hospitality in a large degree, and always seemed 
to enjoy the visits of friends, which called it into exercise. A 
young gentleman who was a candidate for the ministry, and whose 
financial means were limited, was assisted Irv him to a place in his 
household, and received from him the most affectionate and gener- 
ous consideration in the waj^ of aid towards licensure. He was 
eminently faithful in private devotion, notwithstanding his numer- 
ous and pressing engagements. As the room I occupied adjoined 
his study, I knew him to lock his door daily after breakfast and 
family worship, to spend an hour in communion with God, before 
entering upon the duties to which his professorship called him. 

Among the students of the Seminary Dr. Nevin was eminent^ 
popular. At their first acquaintance with him, they were apt to 
regard him as phlegmatic in temperament, frigid in his bearing, and 
difficult of approach ; but repeated intercourse with him developed 
to them his strong sympathetic and benevolent nature, and kindled 
in their hearts the highest admiration and most ardent attachment. 
When in the recitation room he was sometimes a little sharp and 
severe in his tone and exacting ; but all this was overlooked in 
view of the evident design and tendency to promote the fidelity of 
those with whom he was dealing. On such occasions he always 
appeared without a book, seeming to be master of eveiy depart- 
ment in which he was called to give instruction. 



Chap. IX] reminiscences 91 

As a preacher, Dr. Nevin, to thoughtful persons, was exceedingly 
attractive. If he erred at all in this capacity, it was in dealing too 
profoundly with the themes he had in hand. When he had treated 
a subject, every body felt that he had left but little to say that 
could be said touching it with advantage. He was by no means a 
cultivated orator, but there was an originality, persuasiveness and 
unction in his thought, which made the grace of elocution to be 
forgotten. He needed not such external drapery for his earnest 
and exhaustive deliverances. A sermon preached by Dr. Nevin in 
the Presbyterian congregation at Uniontown, Pa., on the " Seal of 
the Spirit," arid published by their request and expense, was a speci- 
men of the mighty grasp with which he seized any theme he under- 
took to explain and elucidate. From the deep impression his dis- 
courses made upon me I remember many of them until this day — 
two particularly on the texts : " Because I live, ye. shall live also," 
and " The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch," which 
were beyond all question the grandest and most glorious exposi- 
tions of divine truth to which I have ever listened. I never knew 
him to read a sermon ; his delivery was alwa}^s without notes, but 
the least attentive hearer could not fail to perceive and feel that he 
had made the most diligent and thorough preparation for his audi- 
ences. He stood calm, poised, and self-possessed in the pulpit, pro- 
claiming his messages with a power, pathos and pungency which 
fixed every eye upon him, and stirred the depths of every heart 
which he addressed. For some time he supplied gratuitously the 
Ladies' Seminary at Sewickley,in which he felt a deep interest, with 
the preaching of the Gospel, and I remember well that one wintry 
Saturday, when he could not reach the place by boat, by reason of 
the ice on the river, he started on foot to travel the fifteen or eigh- 
teen intervening miles to bear the bread of life to his little flock. 

A few years before his death, and after his resignation of the 
Presidency of the College at Lancaster, Dr. Nevin made me a visit 
in Philadelphia. In a private conversation, I asked him how he 
expected to spend his time now that he had no official duties to 
perform. His brief but solemn and significant answer was, " In pre- 
paring for heaven." It may be that the double tie by which we 
were united as cousins and brothers-in-law, tinctures with some 
partiality my estimate of John Williamson Nevin's character; but 
in my soberest, sincerest, and most independent judgment, I hold 
him, and shall so cherish his memory, as one of the greatest, best, 
and most influential men that the American Church has yet pro- 
duced. Very truly yours, 

Lancaster, Pa., Feb. 1, 1889. ALFRED NEVIN. 



A 



CHAPTER X 

THE Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church 
was founded in 1825, and located in the first place at Carlisle, 
Pa., then removed successively from Carlisle to York, Pa., and 
from York to Mercersburg, Pa. It passed through many struggles 
. for existence, but proved to be of eminent service in the Church, 
especially in its transition from the use of the German to that of 
the English language in its congregations. Dr. Lewis Mayer, its 
senior professor, with Dr. Frederick Augustus Rauch,as a colleague 
from the } r ear 1832, remained at his post until the year 1839, when, 
on account of ill health and other considerations, he felt himself 
compelled to resign his professorship in the Seminary, and to with- 
draw from public life. His resignation was accepted by the Synod 
in the fall of 1839, and the Rev. Dr. Jacob Becker, of Northamp- 
ton Co., Pa., an eminent theologian and one who had himself pre- 
pared a number of students for the ministry in a private school of 
his own, was elected to fill Dr. Mayer's place, but for various rea- 
sons he could not see his way clear to accept of this appointment. 
Thereupon the Board of Visitors of the Seminary, as authorized 
by the Synod, proceeded to fill the vacancy by appointing the Rev. 
Albert Helfenstein, Jr., of Hagerstown, Md., at the time one of the 
best educated scholars in the denomination. But he declined also, 
and the Church, considerably torn by dissensions and diversity of 
opinions, was out at sea, not knowing where to look for a master 
in Israel who could command its confidence. In these circum- 
stances the Board called a General Convention or Synod of the 
Church to convene in Chambersburg, Pa., at an early da}\ 

At this time Dr. Nevin was favorably known to some few Re- 
formed ministers, and had once attended the meetings of. their 
Synod at Pittsburgh, some four or five years before, at which he 
had expressed his interest and sympathy in their work, which at 
that time was prevailingly German in character. As no one at 
home could be found to be the standard-bearer in Israel, his name 
was incidentally mentioned in connection with the vacant chair in 
a party of Reformed ministers, suggested probably by Mrs. Dr. B. 
S. Schneck, of Chambersburg, cousin of Dr. D. H. Riddle, of Pitts- 
burgh, through whom she had become more particularly acquainted 
with him. But it was through the Rev. Samuel R. Fisher, a young 

(92) 



Chap. X] rev. samuel r. fisher 93 

man at the time, more than through any one else, that his name 
was brought before the Synod in such a manner as to result in his 
election as professor. The part which he took in the matter was a 
kind of daring inspiration in his own mind, which could hardly be 
expected from one of his usually cool and cautious nature, and it 
is therefore not without interest in itself as well as an important 
thread in this history. 

Whilst Mr. Fisher was pastor of the Emmittsburg charge in 
Maryland, he learned incidentally on Sunday, in one of his congre- 
gations, from a student of the Western Theological Seminary then 
present, that the Rev. Dr. Nevin had resigned his professorship in 
that institution. " This intelligence," says Mr. Fisher, much inter- 
ested already in the general affairs of the Church, " produced a singu- 
lar effect upon my mind. At once I thought I could see light 
breaking through the gloom, which had darkened the prospects of 
properly filling the vacant professorship in the Seminary at Mer- 
cersburg. It occurred to me that Dr. JSTevin was the man who was 
in every way fitted for the position. At the time I had no personal 
acquaintance with him, although I had seen and heard him preach 
at different times. My knowledge of his character and attainments 
as a theologian and biblical scholar, well versed in German litera- 
ature, was obtained through my relations to a number of his inti- 
mate acquaintances and admirers, among whom the Rev. Dr. 
Brown, President of Jefferson College, under whom I had studied, 
was specially prominent. 

" From the moment Dr. Nevin had been thus suggested to my 
mind as a suitable person to fill the vacant professorship, I was in- 
spired with an enthusiasm in regard to it, such as I have never ex- 
perienced in relation to any other subject. It took possession of 
my whole being. It was in my thoughts by day and by night ; and 
for the time being it entered largely into my most fervent devo- 
tional moods. It seemed as though I could not by any effort pos- 
sibly divest myself of it. I spoke with different brethren from time 
to time about it, and my first impulse would have led me to open a 
correspondence with Dr. Nevin, but upon further reflection it seemed 
to me that it might be regarded as presumptuous on my part, as I 
was still young in the ministry and the service of the Church, and 
probably as premature also, in view of the fact that the Board of 
Visitors would soon convene for the purpose of providing for the 
existing exigency in the history of the Church." 

After t H he Board had met and appointed Mr. Helfenstein to fill 
the professorship, Mr. Fisher, as he informs us, did not give up all 



94 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlY. YII 

hope, and accordingly communicated to its members his views and 
feelings in regard to Dr. Nevin, as a person in all respects well 
fitted to fill the professorship, in case Mr. Helfenstein should not 
accept the appointment tendered him, and he was gratified with a 
heart}' response from those present. It was then unofficially agreed 
that he should address the Rev. Dr. Nevin on the subject, and that 
Rev. Benjamin S. Schneck, Editor of the Weekly 31essenger, the 
Church paper at the time, should open a similar correspondence 
with the Rev. Dr. Riddle, of Pittsburgh, an intimate friend of Dr. 
Nevin. Mr. Fisher was informed by Dr. Nevin that whilst he 
appreciated his motives and kind feelings, he must decline granting 
him the permission, which he had asked, of presenting him as a can- 
didate to fill the vacancy at Mercersburg. One reason which he 
assigned was that, not being a native of the German Church, he 
was afraid he would not be able to secure its confidence to such an 
extent as would be necessary to insure his personal comfort and 
success in the position, in which it was proposed to place him. 
Another reason which he assigned was that his resignation as pro- 
fessor in the Seminary at Allegheny had been only conditional, and 
as the condition on which it had been based had been met, he there- 
fore felt under obligations to remain where he was. This was cal- 
culated to cool the ardor of the young enthusiast, but he had faith 
as well as enthusiasm, and he did not regard himself as yet entirely 
discomfited. Dr. Riddle also could not give his friend Mr. Schneck 
any encouragement in regard to the probabilities of Dr. Nevin's 
acceptance of the position in the Seminaiy , in case it should be prof- 
fered to him. At the same time he freely admitted his peculiar 
qualifications for the position, adding that he had " a dash of tran- 
scendentalism about him," which could be no very serious objection 
to him in a German Church. 

The General Convention or Synod of the Reformed Church was 
called to meet at Chambersburg, Wednesday, January 27, 1840, to 
consider the gravity of the situation, to which all the ministers 
within its bounds, one hundred and eiglny-one in all, were invited 
to attend with their lay delegates. The meeting was held in mid- 
winter and the attendance was comparatively small, consisting of 
twent}^ ministers and seven elders. None appeared from the West, 
none from the South, and only one from the East. But the churches 
in the neighborhood and in the adjacent parts of Maryland were 
represented by men who had come together to do their duty in the 
fear of God. After two candidates had been discussed, the way 
was open for Mr. Fisher to propose Dr. Nevin, an outsider, as a 



Chap. X] a unanimous election 95 

candidate, and he dwelt somewhat at length upon his excellent 
character, but more especially upon his reputation as a professor, and.' 
his knowledge of German theology and German literature. The 
latter consideration was probably the most potent argument in his 
favor. Some thought, that if he was such a man as he was repre- 
sented to be, the Presbyterian Church would not suffer him to 
transfer his ecclesiastical relation to any other denomination, to 
which Mr. Fisher thus replied : " The remark may hold good with 
regard to most men. Dr. Kevin, however, I regard as an exception 
to the general rule. If we can satisfy him that it his duty to take 
charge of the professorship at Mercersburg, the whole Presbyterian 
Church combined cannot prevent him from doing so. This, more- 
over, I think the Synod can do. Let the call be unanimous and 
earnest, and the path of duty will be made plain to him. Yea, I 
feel like pledging myself, if the Synod so direct, to go to Pitts- 
burgh with the call, and not to return without receiving assurance 
of a positive answer." Drs. Herron, Riddle, and others acquainted 
with Dr. Nevin at Pittsburgh afterwards expressed themselves in 
similar emphatic language in regard to his strong sense of duty. 

After the close of the discussion respecting the merits of the re- 
spective candidates, the Synod knelt in solemn prayer for direction 
in what was to all present a matter of transcendent importance. 
The names of the other two candidates having been withdrawn, the 
Rev. Dr. Nevin was unanimously elected to the vacant chair of the- 
ology. The Synod then again on bended knee returned thanks to 
God for the harmony which had characterized its proceedings in ar- 
riving at a satisfactory conclusion, and earnestly beseeching Him to 
crown their present decision with His blessing, so that it might lead 
to a happy issue. The call was made out and Rev. B. S. Schneck and 
Rev. S. R. Fisher were appointed a committee to present the call 
to Dr. Nevin in person, and to endeavor to prevail upon him to 
accept of the appointment. Provision was also made for his in- 
stallation at an early day, in case he should accept of the solemn 
call. 

The committee made no delay, and on the following Monday 
they were on their way to cross the Alleghenies in extremely cold 
weather, partly " in open sleds and partly on boards fastened on 
the running gear of a stage-coach." The Rev. Mr. Schneck, the 
senior of the two, probably suffered most in the crossing of the 
mountains, as he had less faith in the success of the mission than 
his younger companion, whose enthusiasm, he confesses, was great, 
leading him on by an irresistible impulse. Upon reaching the end 



96 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlV. VII 

of their journey the.y called upon Dr. Herron first, and explained 
to him the object of their mission. He was frank in his replies, 
and among other things made the remark, "we shall be loth to 
part with Dr. Nevin from our Seminary. We know, however, that 
if -you can convince him, that it is his duty to accept the call from 
your Sjmod, it will be impossible for us to keep him." This was a 
confirmation of a remark that had been made at Chambersburg. 

The committee next visited Dr. Nevin at his residence over in 
Allegheny City. The visit was entirely unexpected, and the object 
of it took him considerably by surprise. In the course of the inter- 
view, he remarked, that some time after he had written the letter 
to Mr. Fisher, declining to allow his name to be brought before the 
S3 T nod, as it appeared that the conditions on which he had con- 
sented to remain at Allegheny Seminary would perhaps not be met, 
he had prepared another letter addressed to him, in which he had 
authorized him to place his name in nomination before the S3 T nod, 
in case it should be deemed proper to do so. But on further re- 
flection he had destroyed that letter, deeming it most proper to 
leave the whole matter to the direction of Providence. This fact 
added force to the impression, which other circumstances seemed 
to make upon his mind, that the hand of Providence was in the 
matter. The committee in several interviews with him sought to 
present simplj r a candid statement of facts, as the}" thought it un- 
wise to excite any expectations that might afterwards be found to 
have been unwarranted in the premises. After Dr. jSTevin had 
promised to give the subject a full and candid consideration, and 
to make as early a reply as possible, the committee returned to 
their homes in the East, leaving him to his own meditations and 
prayers. They were favorably impressed with their prospects of 
success in the object of their trip across the mountains during the 
bleak weather of January — one of the party, of course, more so 
probably than the other. 

On the 5th of March following, Dr. Nevin addressed to Rev. B. 
S. Schneck, the President of the Synod, a letter signifying his will- 
ingness to accede to the call of the Reformed Synod to become one 
of its theological professors. We give it here in full as an expres- 
sive and suggestive document. 

" I am prepared to say that I accept of the call, put into my hands 
by the Rev. Mr. Fisher and } T ourself, by which I have been invited, 
on the part of the Synod of the German Reformed Church, to the 
Professorship of Theology in the Seminary at Mercersburg. This 
notice is communicated to vou as the President of the Synod for 



Chap. X] the acceptance of the call 97 

the present year. It is my intention to apply to the Presbyteiy to 
which I belong, at its regular meeting in April, with the view of 
passing into the German Reformed Church. I shall be ready after- 
wards, with divine permission, to enter on my new office about the 
beginning of June. 

" Allow me, through you, to express to the German Reformed 
Synod my high sense of the honor they have conferred upon me, 
in thus electing me, with one heart and one voice, to a station so 
important and responsible. My inmost prayer is that I may not 
be found in the end unworthy altogether of such confidence. 

" At the same time I must say I have found great difficulty in 
making up my mind to accept the appointment. The question has 
seemed to involve the main crisis of my ministry at least, if not of 
nry life. I have found much around me and much within me to 
resist the call. Other ties and claims, ecclesiastical and social, 
ha\re pleaded against it strongly in my spirit. The greatness of the 
trust, and the difficulties that must be connected with it, have alarmed 
me. The idea of passing into new and untried relations, the fear 
of disappointing just expectations, vague apprehensions of collis- 
ions in the midst of the new order of things, the new moral system, 
with which I must find myself surrounded on entering into the 
German communion, have all contributed to invest the step with a 
painfully solemn interest to m}^ feelings, and to hold my thoughts 
in anxious suspense in regard to listening to such a call. 

" But the difficulties have been made, in the end, to yield to the 
persuasion that I am called of God to go to Mercersburg. The in- 
dications of His will, in the case, have seemed to be too clear and 
striking to be misinterpreted or disregarded. • In view of all the 
circumstances, therefore, I have felt that it is my duty to obey the 
voice of your Synod. I dare not, for the sake of my own peace, 
turn away my ears from the application. The field is im- 
mensely important, and at the same time full of promise. The 
necessity is great. The time is critical. The call has been strange 
and unexpected ; not only without my seeking, but against my own 
judgment and wish explicitly expressed and understood. It is the 
unanimous and hearty call, as it would seem, of the whole Church. 

" My own training might appear to have been providentially or- 
dered by Him, who leadeth the blind in a way not understood by 
themselves, with special reference to this very destination. Though 
not a German by birth, I feel a sort of kindred interest in that 
people, which could hardly be stronger were I one of themselves. 
My childhood and early youth were spent in close familiar commun- 



98 AT ALLEGHENY FROM 1830-1840 [DlY. VII 

ion with German manners and modes of thought. I understand 
the people well. In later life my attention has been turned to their 
Language and Literature. These have awakened in me a new in- 
terest in their favor, and brought me into more extensive fellow- 
ship with the peculiarities of the national mind. All this enters as 
an element into the constitution of the call hy which I find n^self 
bound to go into your Church. The whole case is strengthened by 
the fact that others whose judgment I ought to respect so generally 
admit the weight of the considerations by which I am urged to this 
step. Even those who seem most desirous that I should stay 
where I am, would shrink, I imagine, from the responsibility of ex- 
excising a veto in the case, if it were altogether in their hands; and 
it is K13- confident hope, that the step I am about to take, in quitting 
my Church for yours, will commend itself to others as well as my- 
self in such a way that all will consider it right in the end. 

" Thus do I find myself constrained to go into the German Re- 
formed Church. Let it not be thought, however, that I go reluc- 
tantly or coldly into her communion, now that the duty is settled. 
I go, indeed, with fear and trembling; but I cany along with me 
my entire will. I give nrvself wholly to the German Reformed 
Church, and find no difficulty in making her interests my own. Xo 
Church can boast of a better creed, or a better ecclesiastical frame- 
work. Her fathers rank high in the history of the Reformation. 
The spirit of a time-hallowed faith, such as could once make mar- 
tyrs, older than the Presbyterianism of Scotland, is still enshrined in 
her articles and forms, and the German Church in this country has 
become a rising interest. Xo section of our American Zion is more 
important. Xone embraces vaster resources of power in propor- 
tion to its limits. Xone exhibits a richer intellectual ore, available 
in the same way for the purpose of religion I find no lack of con- 
siderations here to enlist my sympathies or to stimulate nrv zeal. 
I can go heartily into such a church, and in this spirit I now accept 
of the call of your S}mod to the Professorship at Mercersburg." 

This was straightforward language, which, addressed to a Ger- 
man audience, was easily understood. It showed that the man was 
in deep earnest about the matter ; that he came to labor for the 
Reformed Church in all its interests no less than in the professor's 
chair; and that his zeal and enthusiasm were alread}' deepl}' en- 
listed. Just such a person was needed at the time in the peculiar 
circumstances of the German Church in this country — a steady 
helmsman who could speak out, and was willing to do his part in 
guiding the vessel through storms as well as through sunshine. 



Chap. X] the acceptance of the call 99 

But here there was simpry a promise. Would it be fulfilled ? That 
was to be left for the future to decide. Our plain German people 
believed that Mr. Nevin, as he was called, intended to do what he 
said. Hard working pastors intuitively felt that a tower of strength 
had risen up among them, against which the}" could lean in their 
trials. Here were brave words that came from the heart and went 
to the heart. With such a beginning mutual confidence and esteem 
were sure to grow out of the new relation which was about to be 
formed. Not long after this letter was sent to the President of 
the Synod, Dr. Nevin with his family were on their way to Mer- 
cersburg. The change of atmosphere was an agreeable one, and 
he must have felt at home on his return to the Cumberland Valle} r , 
with the North and South Mountains once more bounding the 
horizon, now more pleasing to the eye than ever before. On his 
w&y he sta}-ed over night at Chambersburg, where he met with a 
kind and affectionate reception. 



VIII —AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 

Mt. 37-41 



CHAPTER XI 



DR. NEYIN moved with his family to Mercersburg in the 
spring of 1840, and here for the first time he met Dr. Frederick 
Augustus Ranch, President of Marshall College, and his future 
colleague in the Seminary, whose guest he became until more per- 
manent arrangements could be made for the accommodation of 
himself and family. It is quite natural to suppose that they were 
mutually anxious not only to become acquainted with each other, 
but to look into each other, and ascertain where each one stood in 
the world of ideas. The}^ were still less than forty years of age, 
and yet, with the lines of thought and hard study deeply marked on 
their brows, they seemed to be much older. The one was a Scot- 
tish man, dignified, sedate and apparently unemotional; the other 
was a pure German, full of life, whose enthusiasm, emotions and 
thoughts manifested themselves externally on his countenance. 
How could two such men, so differently constituted, be able to work 
together in the same institution of learning ? It was not long- 
before this question answered itself. They were both wise men, 
spiritually-minded, who looked at the substance of things, lived in 
the region of ideas, and were earnestly concerned that thought or 
truth should rule practically in the world. They had come from 
different races, but possessed the same Teutonic blood in their con- 
stitutions. The Scotchman and the German exhibit marked points 
of divergence externally, but upon a deeper acquaintance, they soon 
come to feel that internally they have the same common life — that 
they are cousins-german. And thus it was with Dr. Xevin and Dr. 
Ranch. The former gives his first impressions of the latter in the 
beautiful Eulogy on his Life and Character, which he delivered 
less than a year after their first acquaintance. 

"It is now just one year,' since I had the privilege of becoming 
acquainted with him personally. I had some knowledge of his gen- 
eral standing previously, but no particular information with regard 
to his character and spirit. Intimately associated as I was to be 

(100) 



Chap. XI] first impressions of dr. rauch 101 

with him in professional life, I had of course felt some anxiety in 
relation to this point ; a feeling which seemed, to have so much 
the more reason, as it was understood that serious difficulties had 
already actually occurred in the official connections of Dr. Rauch, 
in the case of which a large share of the blame was supposed by 
many to rest properly on his shoulders. All anxiety of this sort, 
however, fled my spirit, in a very short time, when I came to 
know the man himself. I found myself attracted to him from the 
very first. His countenance was the index of his heart, open, gen- 
erous and pure. I soon felt that my relations with him were likely 
to be both pleasant and safe. Farther acquaintance only served to 
strengthen this first impression. It was clear to me that he had 
been misunderstood and wronged. He was one of the last men 
probably to be capable of disingenuous cunning or dishonorable 
dealing in any way. Then I perceived very soon, also, that his 
learning and intellectual strength were of a higher order altogether 
than I had. felt myself authorized to expect, though it was not un- 
til the appearance of his ' Psychology ' that I learned to place him 
sufficiently high in this respect. 

" Here again it became clear to me that the proper worth of the 
man had not been understood ; and I could not but look on it as a 
strange but interesting phenomenon that here, at the head of this 
infant college, without care, or calculation, or consciousness, even 
on the part of its friends generally, one of the finest minds of Ger- 
many should have been settled, which under other circumstances 
might well have been counted an ornament to the oldest and most 
conspicuous institution in the land. This seemed to show, indeed, 
a special favor on the part of Heaven towards the whole interest, 
which this enterprise may be considered to involve. No selection 
could have secured probably a fitter man for the station he was 
called to occupy, taking all the circumstances and connections into 
view. My own calculations at least, with regard to him, were large 
and full of confidence ; not only as it respected the College, but in 
view of the general influence he seemed likely to acquire as a 
scholar and a writer." 

Previous to this time, Dr. Nevin had paid considerable attention 
to German Literature and, as he informs us, had derived much edifi- 
cation from German authors, especially from the writings of 
Neander ; but now he was confronted with a German scholar of 
great ability, who could tell him all about German Theology and 
Philosophy, in their best and worst aspects ; and knew precisely 
where its most distinguished authors stood. This was worth to 



102 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

hini at that time more than a library of their best works, or a pro- 
longed visit to Germany itself. It helped very materially to 
strengthen him in his wish to avail himself of the treasures of Ger- 
man thought and learning. It was the spring vacation, and the 
conversations were frequent and protracted, some of which were 
overheard. Once the subject was Greek Grammar, during which 
Dr. Nevin was shown an edition of Kuehner's Greek Grammar, 
then comparatively unknown in this country. After examining it 
carefully, he was so struck with its able treatment of the subject 
and its philosophical spirit, that he at once concluded to translate 
it for the benefit of American scholars. After having translated 
some portions of it, he learned that he had been anticipated and 
that soon one translation of it was to appear in England and another 
in this country. 

Whilst, however, Dr. Nevin was thus well pleased with his new 
colleague, Dr. Ranch, on the other hand, was in fact delighted, his 
pleasure amounting to an enthusiastic surprise, and he so expressed 
himself to the students as opportunities presented themselves. 
Judging from his German stand-point he had met with considerable 
superficiality among American scholars, whose performances on 
public platforms seemed to have more sound than substance in them. 
But here in a very quiet man, less known than many others who 
possessed less ability, he met with an earnest and profound thinker, 
one who, in his opinion, had no superior in the country. He listened 
with close attention to his discourses on Sunday, reminded the 
students of their contents in the class-room on Monday, and as his 
health was not firm, he expressed the wish that his new colleague 
for the future should take his place in the pulpit regularly ; because 
he regarded it as a rare treat to listen to him himself, and wished 
the students to hear him as often as possible. 

He was still a German; and, whilst his sympathies were in fall 
flow with our free institutions, there was much in our American life 
that was to him contradictory, if not absurd, which, in some degree, 
was no doubt the truth. This had often made him feel uncomfort- 
able ; but now he was by the side of one who could give him cor- 
rect ideas of American life, of its bright as well as its dark side, and 
of its intensely earnest, practical tendencies in favor of religion 
and morality. He moreover saw that the accession of a practical 
as well as profound professor to the institutions, with which he had 
identified his life, would inure vastly to their benefit. To a friend 
he made the remark, that now with Dr. Nevin by his side, he "was 
able to breathe freely for the first time in America." The union of 



Chap. XI] rauch's psychology 103 

two such men augured well for the future, both for their own com- 
fort and happiness, as well as for the prosperity of the Church and 
the cause of Christ generally. 

Soon after this first acquaintance thus happily formed, Dr. 
Rauch's " Psychology, or View of the Human Soul, including An- 
thropology,'''' published hy Mr. Dodd, of New York, made its ap- 
pearance. It helped, very materially, to confirm Dr. Nevin's favor- 
able impressions of its author. It was well received and favorably 
noticed in the reviews of the day generally. Dr. Orestes Brown- 
son, of Boston, a very able but eccentric critic, comparing it with 
some other works on the same subject, recently published, pro- 
nounced it decidedly to be " a work of genius." It was at once in- 
troduced into the University of Vermont, as a text book, by Pro- 
fessor Marsh, a diligent student of German literature and philoso- 
phy; and not long after into Darthmouth College and other insti- 
tutions. One of the most discriminating and liberal notices of the 
work came from the Princeton Review, which commended it in 
highly complimentary terms. 

"We are so much accustomed," says the reviewer, "to get our 
German Philosophy at second-hand, that it is a refreshing novelty, 
to have an entirely original work on the subject, written in our 
own language. We have had German translations, which, from the 
inadequacy of our own terminolog} 7- to reproduce the original, 
have been either unintelligible or barbarous, if not both together. 
We have had German Philosophy filtered through the French and 
American burlesques of the continental masters, in which the un- 
intelligible has been made to pass for the profound. And last and 
lowest of all, we have had a train of admiring disciples of Carlyle 
and Emerson, who have no claim to rank among philosophers at 
all, and who by affecting to talk nonsense in ' King Cambyses' 
vein,' have persuaded some that they were talking philosophy. 
We owe an apology to President Rauch for mentioning his name in 
such connection, and it is only in the way of contrast that we do 
it. Let it suffice here to say, that we opened the work with sincere 
respect for the author, and that we laid it down with increased re- 
gard for his learning, taste and piety. 

" In the very outset of our remarks, let us be clearly understood 
as placing Dr. Rauch in a very different class from the metaphysi- 
cians with whom we have had occasion to deal. He is no compiler, 
retailer, ©r sciolist ; he affects no inaccessible heights of mystical 
dictum ; even where a Transcendentalist, he is not such a one as 
would please the admirers of Spinosa or Hegel. 



104 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

" We see such a gulf between the idea of a God eternal, unchange- 
able, all-wise, all-good, simple, immense, aud personal and that of 
an eternal, impersonal character, ever straining after self-conscious- 
ness, that we can conceive of no two systems more destructive of 
one another. The difference between Deism and Christianity be- 
ing trifling in comparison. Of this godless philosophy we see no 
traces in this work. We rejoice to see for once a work on Philosophy 
in which we find the name of Christ, and in which we recognize the 
fallen state of man, the need of regeneration and the influence of 
the Holy Spirit. 

" But when the author conducts us into the department of Fancy, 
as a nobler sort of conception, we feel at once the strangeness of 
his representations and the affinity of the subject with his own 
genius. He abounds in illustrations drawn from the ancient re- 
mains of Poetry, Sculpture, Painting and Architecture. The} T are 
gracefully strewed through the whole course, and are never inappro- 
priate or far-fetched. In no work have we ever seen so copious an 
illustration of Psychology from the stores of ancient histoiy and 
the drama. 

"The author considers Imagination as the activity of the mind, 
which, with freedom and care, unites different images, or creates new 
ones from materials furnished from sensations and conceptions ; 
and further, as giving to the new images contents which did not orig- 
inally belong to them. And it is here in our judgment that Dr. 
Rauch is most at home. It is imagination in its high import which 
predominates in the development of his mind, and when we are 
most satisfied, it is the elegant scholar, the tasteful critic, the philo- 
sophical guide to the interior of Art rather than the constructive 
philosopher, whom we recognize and admire. He hangs garlands on 
the cold marble of the Porch and Lyceum, and makes us wish that 
he would give free scope to his talent for aesthetic composition. 
On these topics the brilliancy and exuberance of the examples and 
comparisons remind us more of Grcethe, Winckelmann and Schiller 
than of the consequential spinners of the metaplrvsic web." — See 
Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, July No., 1840. 

This criticism from the Princeton stand-point was just, generous, 
and discriminating. It admitted that a " Transcendentalist ? ' — a 
term in bad odor at Princeton as well as elsewhere in this country 
at the time — did not necessarily mean a pantheist or infidel, having 
no faith in a divine revelation. It can, like many other words, be 
used in a Christian as well as a pantheistic sense. Dr. Murdock, 
of New Haven, therefore, strangely overlooked this distinction in a 



Chap. XI] rauch's psychology 105 

small work on Modern Philosophy, published in 1843, where devo- 
ting a chapter to the Philosophy of Dr. Rauch, he calls him " a Pan- 
theist as well as a Transcendentalism," and seems to express some 
doubt whether he was a believer in any special revelation from God. 
It would be just as fair to insinuate that Dr. Murdock had adopted 
all the excesses of the empirical philosophy, to which he was wedded, 
with its gross materialism and agnosticism. 

Dr. Nevin, as a matter of course, gave the new work on mental 
philosophy his careful examination, the result of which was, as he 
pleasantly remarked, to place the author still higher in his estima- 
tion as a man of learning than he had done when he first met him, 
although, as we have seen, his first impressions had gone beyond 
anything that he had previously felt himself authorized to expect. 
His review of the book, in the Messenger, was cautious, but favor- 
able and highly commendatory. He had come to Mercersburg with 
idealistic, platonizing tendencies, and as one of his clerical friends 
said, with a tendency, at least, towards Transcendentalism, and 
this new work met with a ready response in his inward spiritual 
nature. Subsequently he studied it more profoundly, using it for 
many years as a text-book in the College; and it is entirely safe 
to say, that it exerted a potent influence in giving form to his sub-, 
sequent philosophical thinking and doctrines. It was to him a 
starting point, and more or less a standing point, from which a new 
world of thought grew forth and expanded in his mind, which, if. 
occasioned by contact with the mind of Rauch, became peculiarly 
his own. All the circumstances connected with the appearance of 
the book, no less than its spirit, purpose, and style, were calculated 
to commend it to his attention, and to give his thoughts a new and 
wholesome direction. 

" The author," he says in his review, " is a German, thoroughly 
trained in the literature and philosophy of the Fatherland. The 
peculiar, characteristic world of thought which prevails there, is 
the original and native home of his spirit. At the same time, he 
has lived long enough in this countiy to make himself familiar 
with its language, and to put himself fully in possession of the 
mind which this language embodies. Under these circumstances 
he is not a mere German in his views. The Scotch-English system 
of thinking, and of philosophy also, has grown to be familiar 
ground to his mind, and as a consequence he is prepared, as his 
work shows, to yield to it a fair share of respect in his metaphys- 
ical speculations. Here is a position which must ensure, at all 
events, an original work, a position new at least as compared with. 
1 



106 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

an} T from which observations have been made previously in this 
country. Such -a work, too, may be expected to answer a most 
important purpose in counteracting and correcting the one-sided- 
ness of both those antagonistic tendencies of the times, already 
mentioned, and reconciling and bringing together what there may be 
in them separately of truth and right. 

" That some such marriage as this might be effected between 
these different forms of thought, b} r bringing the German and 
Scotch systems of philosoplrv to rest upon a common ground, 
would seem to have been before the mind of President Rauch in 
his present work. It is, at all events, as he himself informs us, an 
attempt to unite the metaplrvsics of Germany and of this country. 
The object of the work has been to reduce both to one organic form, 
that should embody the life of each in a single nature. This could be 
done, of course, only by ascertaining the truth itself. No other sol- 
vent could be considered sufficient in such a case, to subdue and re- 
concile the opposing forces which were to be subjected to its action. 

" The system of Dr. Rauch then is not German transcendent- 
alism in the objectionable sense of that term. Because a certain 
general form of philosophy has run out into pantheism in certain 
cases, must it be assumed at once that it can have no safer devel- 
opment in other hands ? Or, will it follow that all the serious and 
deep thinkers of Germany are in like manner involved in sheer 
mysticism, or at least incapable of perceiving and following out 
their own schemes of thought ? Such an idea must appear to any 
sound judgment illogical in the extreme. Let us have a clear un- 
derstanding of what we mean b}^ transcendentalism, before we al- 
low ourselves to make such sweeping conclusions on the strength 
of the simple word. When all this shall be done, no room cer- 
tainly can be left for applying it in the way of reproach to the 
work now before us. Dr. Rauch does not leave the world behind 
him to expatiate among the clouds. He deals with man as he finds 
him in common life. He has no sympathy with speculations that 
aim to lift the mind as their subject out of its true and proper 
sphere, and so to trench in the end on the personality as well as the 
moral relation of men, subverting the very foundation of religion. 
The groundwork of his system is substantially the same, indeed, 
that is generally recognized in the school of Locke. All is made 
to rest ultimately on the sensuous life. It is by means of the 
bodily senses only — serving as occasions — that the soul sprouts, 
and begins its nrysterious way towards the ethereal form of per- 
fection, which it is found, in the end, to assume. 



Chap. XI] rauch's psychology lot 

" On the other hand, the Psychology 7 of Dr. Rauch is not, by any 
means, in the characteristic spirit of the Scotch-English philosophy, 
as this is ordinarily distinguished from the German. Here is no 
transition formally made from one camp over into the other. The 
treatise does not coincide in its general line with the works of 
Locke, or Reid, or Brown, as these, notwithstanding all their differ- 
ences, are found to coincide with one another. It differs from them 
not specifically only, but genetically also. After all, the predomi- 
nant spirit in it is German. The philosophy is spiritual more than 
sensuous. It looks to the real more than the phenomenal. It 
strives to penetrate the life of its subject, rather than to dissect it 
anatomically when it is dead. Some may find an odor of tran- 
scendentalism in it on this very account. But to such persons any- 
thing is likely to prove transcendental that carries them out of their 
common track of thought. So far as this particular style of deal- 
ing with Psychology is concerned, the transcendentalism of Ger- 
many will do us no harm." 

As said above, the philosophy of Dr. Rauch looked to the real 
more than to the phenomenal — to what Plato called the substance 
of things, which addresses the spiritual nature of man in distinction 
from appearances, which impress merely the external senses. In 
this respect it fell in fully with the uprising of Germany under 
Schelling, Hegel and others in opposition to the empirical philoso- 
phy of Locke — to some extent favored by Kant — and rent asunder 
the chasm which restricted the area of human knowledge. For 
this reason the new phase of philosophy was not improperly said 
to be transcendental, when it once came to transcend the pent-up- 
utica of skepticism and emerged from the dark shades of agnosti- 
cism. For further information regarding Dr. Rauch's philosophy, 
the reader is respectfully referred to the chapters on Ranch's 
Christian Ethics, JEsthetics,and Philosophy in general, in " College 
Recollections at Mercersburg from 1839-1845," published by the 
author of this volume in 1886. 



CHAPTER XII 

AT the opening of the Summer Session of the College and Semi- 
-£*- nary, on the 20th of Maj T , Dr. Nevin was inducted into office 
as Professor of Theolog}', on which occasion he delivered an Inau- 
gural Address, which was afterwards published and extensively read 
in the churches. It made a profound impression at the time, Loth 
on account of the striking views which it expressed, and because it 
served as a mirror clearly reflecting the image of the man who was 
to be a future leader in Israel. It gave general satisfaction and re- 
vived the courage and faith of those who had struggled long and 
labored hard, in the midst of many difficulties, to establish a School 
of the Prophets, which was to supply the destitute portion of the 
German Church with ministers. Some had their doubts whether 
such a small denomination as the Reformed would ever come to 
anything, and some intelligent persons — on the outside — perhaps, 
thought that, as the new professor became master of the situation, 
he might and should bring it into that household of faith in which 
he had been born and educated. The address was straightforward 
and shattered at once all such imaginations. It was full of con- 
fidence and faith, and this first voice from Mercersburg was a vig- 
orous appeal to ministers and members alike to arise and build up 
the broken down walls of Zion, to stand fast in their places, and to 
do the work which Providence had assigned them in a distinct his- 
torical Anglo-German Church. 

After giving expression to his own sense of the dignity and sig- 
nificance of the Christian ministry in the waj- of introduction, the 
speaker dwelt at greater length on the mission of the German Re- 
formed Church, as it was then called, in connection with the enter- 
prise of Synod in establishing for its necessities a Seminary and a 
College. On both of these topics the reader is presented with a 
few of the more salient thoughts, forcibl}^ and beautifully expressed. 

" The institution of the Christian Ministry ," said the professor 
in the vigor of manhood, but with all the gravity and earnestness 
of a sage, "stands foremost in point of importance, among all the 
arrangements on which the welfare of life, in its proper civilized 
form, is found to depend. Xo other enters so deeply and steadily 
into the inward moral economy of societ} 1 - ; none links itself more 
vitally with all the radical interests of the individual and all the 
primary necessities of the State. 

(108) 



Chap. XII] the christian ministry 109 

"Viewed simply as a human or worldly arrangement, apart from 
its higher purposes and aspects altogether, it may well be considered 
the most important form of power that has ever been brought to 
bear on the human mind. What agency can be imagined more fully 
adapted to produce effect than one which thus spreads itself out 
through the social mass, and renews itself incessantly from w T eek 
to week, in the same direction and under the same general form ? 

" The agency of the pulpit, under this view, is of more might by 
far than the agency of the Senate chamber. The pastoral office, 
distilling its influence like gently falling dew or rain, in just those 
circumstances which are best adapted to open a way for it to the 
secret fountains of thought and feeling, is an institution whose 
operations will be found in the end to go deeper and to reach 
farther than the policy and state machinery of Cabinets can ever do. 

" The man, who stands up before a congregation from week to 
week as the authorized expounder of truth and duty, can never fail 
in the end to leave the image of what he is himself, more or less 
fully impressed on all that come under the sound of his voice. His 
people, especially those of them who have grown up under his min- 
istrations from childhood or early youth, catch something even of 
his external manner. The tones and the inflections of his voice 
become in some measure theirs. His whole appearance and deport- 
ment, especially in the pulpit, work in this way educationally on 
the minds of his hearers ; so that it is far from being a matter of 
indifference what a minister's looks and tones and gestures may be 
in the sacred desk, as many persons are apt to suppose. But all 
this is only the outward sign of a much deeper effect, which in these 
circumstances is sure to be produced. The minister's style of think- 
ing, as certainly as his style of speaking, will after a time show 
itself among his hearers. His taste, if it be bad, is sure to be con- 
tagious ; whilst it works with an influence that is universally refin- 
ing, when it may happen to be chaste and good. The character of 
his understanding, his processes of reasoning, the frame and the 
structure of his thoughts, all communicate themselves in some 
measure to the congregation over which he presides as public 
teacher. Under this view, it is not easy to say what an amount of 
mere educational power is exerted by the Christian ministry over 
those who acknowledge its authority. Their intellectual conforma- 
tion will not in the end be what it would have been in other circum- 
stances. 

" I have often been surprised with the observation, which it has 
fallen in my way to make with regard to this point. In almost 



110 AT 3IERCERSBUR0 FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. VIII 

every instance, in which I have had an opportunity for comparing 
the characters and manners of students, even after the}' had finished 
their college education, with the character and manner of the min- 
istry under whose preaching they sat in their earl} r years, the 
evidence of snch an educational relationship, as I have now de- 
scribed, has been quite clear. Such effects are the natural results 
of the ordinary laws of mind. And what becomes apparent in the 
case of students is only the outward expression of what all in the 
same circumstances have experienced in the same way. The mind 
of the congregation is always modified educationally by the mind 
that acts upon it steadily from the pulpit. 

"But the importance of the sacred ministry rests on higher 
grounds and universally more solemn than these. The grand ob- 
ject is the moral improvement of those who come under its power. 
Righteousness and truth in the souls of men are the vital interests 
to which its energies are b} T special consecration devoted. As such, 
it is more than a device of the state ; something more than a be- 
nevolent agency, originated by wise and good men for the spiritual 
benefit of the world. It is a divine institution. Planned and 
sanctioned by Infinite Wisdom as the best possible arrangement that 
could be made to cany forward the vast design of the Gospel. It 
carries along with it from age to age a divine supernatural force 
for the accomplishment of spiritual effects with reference to its de- 
sign. It works with irresistible power on the hearts of men, and 
thus takes hold on the very foundations of character and life. It 
is might}' through God to the pulling down of strongholds. All 
other forms of power are weak in comparison with this. 

" To any community then, I repeat it, the Christian ministry is 
an interest of the most vital consequence. Under its proper health- 
ful form, it will be found encircling with true conservative power 
all that is sound and wholesome in the social state, elevating men 
to their true dignity, and bearing them successfully forward to- 
wards their proper destiny. And where it may happen to be shorn 
of its power, society must be held to be out of joint in the most 
serious respect. Defect or corruption here involves a heavier calam- 
ity than defect or corruption in any other department in the social 
system. The want of a proper judiciary would be an evil less worthy 
of being deprecated than the want of an adequate Gospel ministry. 
A bad administration of the state is not so great a calamity as the 
absence of all proper light and power from the pulpit. The heaviest 
affliction that can fall on an}' country in this world is comprised in 
the fulfilment of that terrible word, 'I will come unto thee quickly 



Chap. XII] the German character 111 

and remove thy candlestick out of his place.' Compared with this, 
burdensome taxes, disordered finances, governmental abuses in gen- 
eral, are entitled to small consideration. The question how the 
currency should be regulated is of less account by far than the 
question. How shall a proper provision be made for supplying the 
people with sound and wholesome religious instruction? 

" Institutions and efforts, which propose to do something towards 
a proper provision for this great religious and social interest, are 
alwa}^s entitled to respect ; and so far as they may be found suit- 
able and sufficient for their proposed end, they may well challenge 
the sympathy and support of all true patriots, as well as of all true 
Christians. The} r should feel, that in lending their help to efforts, 
which are made for providing and maintaining in this nation a 
competent and efficient Gospel ministry, they are rendering to their 
country and their race the highest kind of service of which they 
are capable." 

After discussing in this way the importance of the Christian 
ministiy in general, the Professor goes on to speak of the move- 
ment on the part of the Reformed Church which had led to the 
establishment of a Theological Seminary and College, whose pri- 
mary object was to supply the American German people with prop- 
erly educated religious teachers. Its necessit}^ was at once patent, 
and the idea that it might be done by proxy by some other relig- 
ious denomination was preposterous as well as impracticable. The 
field was vastly important, one of the most promising kind, and 
Providence had given it to the Germans themselves to cultivate. 

" The territory," said the speaker, " comprised in the bounds of 
the Reformed Church, is very great, and includes a large portion 
of the finest soil that is to be found in the United States and under 
the highest cultivation. The character of the people belonging to 
its connection, or falling naturally and properly under its care, is 
fall of encouragement. The original elements of the German mind 
are still retained in their moral institutions, only modified to some 
extent, and cast, as it were, into the American mould, by the pecu- 
liar influences to which they have been subjected, (under a remove 
of two or three generations from their ancient birthplace) in this 
new world. 

" Qualities of sterling value are imbedded in their spiritual nature, 
which need only to be properly developed by means of knowledge 
and religion, working hand in hand, to place them as a people in 
the very foremost rank of excellence and greatness. The German 
mind is constitutionally vigorous and free. Simplicity, honesty 



112 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

and integrity characterize it strikingly under all circumstances. It 
leans towards nature and truth. It is thoughtful, meditative and 
quiet. It abounds in sentiment and feeling; and it always suffers 
a sort of unnatural violence, when it is found, through the prevalence 
of selfish and low aims, belying its native element in this respect. 
No people are more susceptible than the Germans of all the deeper 
and more spiritual emotions of our nature. None have a greater 
aptitude naturally to be wrought upon by music, hy painting, and 
poetry, and all that addresses itself to the sesthetical faculty in the 
soul. None naturally have a quicker sense of the beautiful and 
sublime, whether in the world of nature or in the world of spirit. 
None are more susceptible of all that is deep in friendship or sacred 
in love. In none is the instinct of religion more powerful, or the 
congenialitj^ of the soul with all that is vast and awful in faith, with 
all that is profound in devotion, more readily and strongty clis- 
played. 

" Indeed the faults of the German character stand more or less 
in affinity with the favorable susceptibilities and tendencies which 
have just been mentioned. They are perverse, one-sided develop- 
ments of forms of life, the native excellency of which cannot fail to 
be perceived in some measure even in such distortions. These, it 
is the business of a proper religious culture to remove or prevent, 
and happily in this country, the state of society and the reigning 
tone of thought are well suited to counteract those moral aberrations 
to which the mind of Germany at home is most exposed ; thus plac- 
ing it in the most favorable circumstances with regard to such cul- 
ture, and contributing greatly to the efficacy of it as far as it may be 
employed. 

" Such is the character of the people, to whose spiritual welfare 
the enterprise of the German Reformed S} T nod has primary respect. 
It is a character which involves a great deal, not only for the Ger- 
man population itself to which it belongs, but to the American 
nation generally. Commercially, politically and morally, the influ- 
ence of this people is immense ; and the influence which, from their 
resources and relations, they imiy be expected to exert hereafter, 
and which it is desirable to exert under a healthful form as quicklj- 
as possible, may be said to be beyond all calculation." 

The professor then looking over the vast range of territory oc- 
cupied hy the German diaspora in this country, extending out into 
the West and increasing in population every year by immigration, 
asks the significant question, How and by whom are its spiritual 
wants to be provided for, so that it ma} T blossom as the rose ? 



Chap. XII] our German churches 113 

"Who then," he goes on to say, " naturally ought to care for 
these desolations, if it be not the German population of the conn- 
try themselves, found in more favorable circumstances, especially 
on this side of the Alleghenies? Who may be considered, by their 
nature and position, qualified in the same way, to work successfully 
in such a field? If the German population of this country is to 
rise at all to its proper rank in a religious point of view, it must 
be within the framework of its own ecclesiastical institutions and 
by means mainly of its own exertions. Its interests cannot, with 
propriety or safety, be devolved upon others. 

" Can the English thus provide for the necessities of the German 
population ? Are not their hands already full, with work more di- 
rectly and immediately their own ? Can they break through the 
barrier, which is still interposed between the two people by differ- 
ence of language to a great extent, and not less perhaps by differ- 
ence of national temperament ? Are our German Churches to 
merge themselves in the religious systems of England and Scotland, 
on this side of the Atlantic ? Are they willing to see their own 
missionar}^ ground wrested from their hands, when it should be 
their ambition, as it is plainly their solemn trust, to accomplish 
the work themselves? 

" I would be the last to countenance or encourage national pre- 
judices in any case; and least of all would I be willing to justify 
anj^ sentiment of this sort, as it regards the relations of the Church 
I left with the one which has just taken me, as an adopted son, into 
her bosom. Though two communions in one aspect, they are in 
another altogether the same. The Reformed Church of Scotland 
and the Reformed Church of Germany, as well as the Reformed 
Church of France and of Holland, are so man 3^ twin-sisters by birth, 
not merely of the Protestant Reformation, but of the Reformation 
in its purest form, as it was perfected finally at Geneva under the 
gigantic spirit of Calvin. In no sense do they constitute different 
religious sects, according to the proper use of the term. 

" But in view of all this I do not hesitate to say that the German 
Reformed Church ought not to lay aside her distinctive national 
character and merge herself in a foreign interest. Nothing is clearer 
than the fact that her people have not the least idea of thus quit- 
ting their national position at present; but independently of this, I 
would say that the thing in itself is not to be desired, and if any 
disposition of this sort does not exist, it ought not to be encouraged. 

" In Eastern Pennsylvania especially, the predominent form of 
mind will continue to be German; and that influence in the Church, 



114 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

which is visibly of German constitution and German growth, must 
in the end prove more effective in controling its character than any 
other. For the German Reformed Church to renounce its German 
character would be a sort of treason to the German interest gener- 
ally. Our brethren of the Lutheran and Moravian Churches might 
justly complain of us in such a case, that they were left to bear 
alone the heat and burden of the day, which belongs by a divine 
appointment equally to us all. They have no right -to desert us. 
We have no right to desert them. The united weight of all, stand- 
ing fast to their national standard, will all be needed to make a 
right moral impression on the wide-spread community to which 
they belong; and to withstand successfully the force of those vari- 
ous forms of infidelity and error to which it is coming more and 
more to be exposed. 

" The case is clear. The German Church must rise within her- 
self, under God, by and from herself. She must adhere to her own 
standards. She must have her own ministry; and in order to this, 
her own institutions for bringing her own sons forward to the sacred 
office. She should continue to cherish still her national sympathies, 
and the hallowed associations of her own faith and worship. As 
Germans the best service they can have it in their own power ordi- 
narily to render to the cause of religion in this country, will be to 
abide in their own Church, and to do all that in them lies to assist 
it in putting on the full strength of the Lord. And we may add, 
that we have a right to expect confidently the sympathy and the 
friendly co-operation of brethren in other Churches here in this 
work. Especially may we look to the Reformed Churches of 
English and Scotch extraction, who rnsty be considered in a certain 
sense doctrinally and morally one with ourselves — this extraction 
being the only exception. 

" If there ever was a case in which a people were bound to rally 
round a common cause, as with the spirit of one man, it seems to 
me that we have it here. Who that has the heart of a German 
within him can refuse to lend it to a work, which looks so directly 
to the moral elevation of a community, so great, so powerful, so full 
of promise, and to which he feels himself bound hy so many ties ? 
Can we conceive of an event, within the same range of possibility, 
that would be so auspicious to the interests of truth, of freedom, 
and human happiness, in this country, as the general triumph of 
light and truth through the mighty mass of mind between the 
Atlantic and the Alleghenies only, rousing it to action worthy of 
itself and clothing itself with the full strength of its constitution 



Chap. XII] more laborers 115 

fully developed? Would it not be to the whole land as life from 
the dead? Where should we find, in such a case, in these whole 
United States, a community of the same extent so interesting to 
look upon, or that might be considered more necessary to the 
religious and political prosperity of the land? The dawn of such a 
day as we have imagined might seem already to have broken above 
the horizon. The German mind has begun to awake from its slum- 
ber, and now, may be expected soon to make itself felt in a new and 
extraordinary way. The Church is struggling to rise, with a reso- 
lution and energy which bid fair to increase every year. 

" But there must be action here as well as prayer. Our Institu- 
tions are not complete. They need to be extended and made 
strong. All this should be done without delay. The case calls for 
the most prompt and vigorous measures. Every year is precious. 
All that is wanted might be finished in a single year. Why then 
should this work languish or drag ? How many men have we in 
the German Reformed connection who would be able single-handed 
to endow a professorship, or to build a college, and scarcely miss 
the donation when it is made ? They can hardly find an interest 
more worthy of their generosity, or more likely t,o make it tell in 
perennial blessings on the people to which they belong. 

" Young men also of proper capacity are needed in large num- 
bers for carrying forward this great design. Parents who can af- 
ford it may confer a high favor on the community, as well as on 
their sons themselves, merely by giving them a liberal education. 
Let our substantial farmers send their sons to college. The great 
want at present among us is ministers. Parents, who can thus 
bring forward a son for the use of the Church, should feel that in 
doing so they make the richest offering in their power to present. 
Young men too, who have a heart to devote themselves in this way, 
should come forward and offer their persons for the service. Let 
none such betake themselves to other denominations. The German 
Church lays her hand on her own children, and claims them sol- 
emnly for herself." 

This Address, of which we have here given the prominent 
thoughts, was a remarkable one, whether we consider its judicious 
and conservative tendency, or the character of the speaker, a 
Scotch-Irish man, addressing an immense German audience, includ- 
ing many more absent than present. It had the force of an his- 
torical event. Its contents, passing through the minds of minis- 
ters and the more intelligent elders, gradually trickled down into 
the minds of the people. Such as were English in speech said : 



116 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

Dr. Nevin means what lie says. The German standing by, and lis- 
tening without understanding many of the words of the address, 
but readily catching its drift and spirit, quickly added, " Der Mann 
ist im Ernst. 1 ' 1 

In less than a year from its delivery, the entire Church, from the 
Delaware to the Susquehanna, and out over the Allegheny moun- 
tains into Ohio, was aglow with zeal and activity, as we shall see, in 
building up its schools of learning, and in the support of missions 
and education. The happy settlement of a new professor at Mer- 
cer sburg, with his brave and honest words, had much to do in giving 
the Church an impulse such as it had never before received in this 
country, illustrating what has been already said that the Germans 
have " qualities of sterling value, which need only to be developed 
b}^ knowledge and religion." Here then in language like this we 
have the manifestation of a broad comprehensive mind, the evidence 
of a high order of integrity, and solemn sense of responsibility. 
This one instance more than redeems the narrow infatuation and pre- 
sumption of some ministers who pass from one denomination to 
another, not to work in the line of its histoiy and genius, but to 
carry out their own subjective views and feelings, and if not liter- 
ally, yet in effect, to take their churches with them over to the 
denomination from which they came. That was not the way of our 
true and honest Scotchman, who, if he was not, in fact, the de- 
scendant of a Highland hero, ought to have been. He did all that 
he promised, fully identified himself with the Reformed Church, 
and took her for " better or worse." He cut loose his vessel be- 
hind him, and began to work with his brethren, as if he had been 
born in their church. He acted wisely, and the results spoke for 
themselves. 



CHAPTER XIII 

AS already said, during the Summer term of 1840 Br. Nevin was 
-O- frequently called on to conduct worship in the College Chapel, 
at the special request of Dr. Rauch, whose failing health admon- 
ished him to husband his physical strength. He was quite profuse 
in affirming, that the institutions were very happy in being supplied 
with discourses so eminently adapted to edify the students as well 
as himself and the rest of the professors. They presented a rather 
strong contrast to those which had been wont to be delivered in 
the same place, in st}de, long continued processes of logical reason- 
ing, in being about twice the usual length of sermons, and suffi- 
ciently dry when heard for the first time to induce drowsiness, es- 
pecially on a warm summer afternoon. They were oft-hand, with 
only an occasional flash of imagination, with no effort at rhetorical 
display, severely logical, pungent, and earnest in their appeals to 
the conscience and the intellect. The speaker had a grave physique, 
a scholarly appearance, a strong, deep, masculine voice, such as is 
seldom heard in the pulpit, and presented the elements of an orig- 
inal character, all of which arrested the attention of collegian no 
less than theologian. The former made it a point to be able to 
say that he understood the sermon, in which, in a measure, he was 
perhaps successful, after he had become accustomed to the preach- 
er's peculiar style and language. 

One of these Sunday discourses, apparently as intellectually dry 
as the rest, nevertheless, made a deep impression on the minds of 
the hearers, and became the subject of remark, as replete with rich 
and striking thoughts. The theme was Party Spirit, and on fur- 
ther inquiry it was ascertained that the sermon embodied the sub- 
stance of an address delivered before the Literary Societies of 
Washington College, Washington, Pa.; and, as it had then been pub- 
lished only in some monthly magazine, a desire was expressed that 
a copy of it might be secured for publication in pamphlet form, 
which was accordingly granted under the circumstances. Thus all 
could see it, and also study it. 

It differed somewhat from addresses usually delivered at College 
Commencements, but if compared with those of Webster, Wirt, or 
Southard, taken as a whole, it would not suffer from the compar- 
ison. It was sufficiently literary whilst it was intensely practical, 

cm) 



118 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

and at the same time more philosophical and profound than is 
usually the case with discourses of this class. 

The subject of the address was most probably suggested by the 
bitterness of party spirit as it existed in those clays in the political 
world, and perhaps just as much, if not more so, between the Old 
and New Schools in Dr. Nevin's own denomination. We here give 
some account of this address, because it is a photograph of the 
author's mind at this particular period in his history. To some ex- 
tent it also foreshadows at this early period the character of the 
man in his spiritual and intellectual tendencies, as these subse- 
quently had opportunity to develop themselves with less obstruc- 
tion in the freer atmosphere of the Reformed Church. It was an 
earnest of what he might have to say in the future in regard to Sect- 
ism in the churches. It may be said to be a cross between a ser- 
mon and a literary address, which does not, however, detract from 
its strength in the least. It is divided into three parts, treating suc- 
cessively of the nature, the evil, and the cure of Party Spirit, in 
which every now and then the author is sure to support his posi- 
tions with appropriate quotations from Scripture. 

"Part} r Spirit," said the preacher, "is not simply zeal for the 
views, opinions, or measures of a certain party or class of men, 
with whom we may feel it to be our duty to co-operate in the pro- 
motion of just and honorable ends. Much less is it to be con- 
founded with patriotism, with zeal for the promotion of one's par- 
ticular denomination, or activity in voluntary associations for the 
benefit of the community or of the world at large. ' To be at- 
tached to the sub-division, to love the little platoon to which we 
belong in society,' said Edmund Burke, 'is the first principle, the 
germ as it were of public affections. It is the first link in the series 
by which we proceed to a love of our country and mankind.' 

" The social principle, which binds men together in large as well 
as small platoons, enters vitally into the constitution of human na- 
ture, without which individual men would be mere atoms, and man 
would no longer be man or the common unity of races, nations, 
tribes, and individuals. Without contact and communion with 
other spirits like himself, he would have no development worthy 
of his nature, and no history that constantly leads him from one 
grade of perfection to another. There is a common mind belonging 
to each age and to every country, to every province and class of 
society, which surrounds men as an atmosphere and in the end 
forms the character of the individual and the community. Men are 
not now what they were a thousand or two thousand years ago, or 



Chap. XIII] address on party spirit 119 

even a century back of us. The proper and the final regeneration of 
the world depends on the spread and triumph of this principle, by 
bringing together into one the dissevered elements of humanity, 
that are now scattered abroad. 

" Party Spirit is an abuse, a misdirection of the social principle. 
It employs it but only for its own selfish purposes and ends. Its 
professions of course are always good, or they try to appear so. 
Not seldom the objects sought to be promoted are in themselves 
commendable, but both the spirit and the means employed in their 
pursuit are totally foreign to their nature. The partisan cares most 
for himself; for his own emolument or the gratification of his own 
base passions. The character or good name of others who may be 
in his way are of no account to him, and he can slay them, tread 
them in the dust, and enjoy his savage triumph. Bad passions seek 
for outward support, and this they find when they have a multitude 
behind them to feed their consuming fires. Often they claim for 
themselves the voice of conscience, or, as they call it, a sense of duty, 
when there is not a scintillation of true conscientiousness in all 
their fury. Even the lives of others no less than their happiness 
are not sacred interests in the mind of the partisan, when they 
come in his way ; and he is willing, directly or indirectly, to stamp 
them out, in order that the sense of self-exaltation may be realized 
in the triumph secured, by ways that are dark, selfish and mean. 
Most malicious, satanic and vile is this Spirit of Party, under what- 
ever phase it shows itself, whether in the high places of the Church, 
State, or elsewhere. 

" It may be modified by external circumstances, so as to operate 
as a quiet, unobtrusive force both in the politician, the socialist, or 
the religionist ; but when the moral restraints are out of the way and ' 
the needful impulse has been given to the corporate mind, it puts 
on the form of an ungovernable phrensy, and all individuality is 
borne down aud swept away for the time by its whirlwind course. 
Then, also, as the imagination becomes quickened and inflamed, it 
runs more and more into the character of a dark and malignant 
fanaticism, and is ripe for the most cruel excesses. 

" The mischief and evils flowing from Party Spirit, when it once 
gets possession of the social principle, and perverts it in the interest 
of pure individual selfishness, extend over the entire surface of 
human life, everywhere blighting what is good and true as a malig- 
nant mildew. Their name is Legion. Once organized and strength- 
ened by numbers — most of whom are mere dupes — it tries to enforce 
the respect of others for its virtuous principles and its disinterest- 



120 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

edness in promoting useful public interest, when its high boastings 
are the veriest hypocricy and the merest cant. 

"Yes," sa} T s Dr. Nevin, "hateful and terrific is the Spirit of 
Party, in its own nature. In its ultimate aim it is supremely anti- 
social the more it becomes incorporated with the social feeling. 
Some disguise is thrown over its character in this respect by the 
way in which it is found to diffuse itself at first, as it were, over a 
general interest ; but this is only a disguise, and so far as it pre- 
vails at all, it serves rather to enhance the mischief by making it 
more insidious as well as more refined. Where, in fact, shall we 
meet with pride and all uncharitableness so loudly proclaimed or 
so unblushingly indulged in, as when the Spirit of Party rules 
rampant over the inward man ? Self-glorification and self-will are 
here carried to their utmost pitch. Malice finds its largest scope. 
Hatred ririay reach its most fanatical extreme. Revenge may enjoy 
its most fiendish triumph. All this, I say, belongs to Party Spirit 
in its own nature. There may be only a partial development of 
these sins against charity at any particular time ; but their entire 
strength is there, at the same time, as a latent possibilit}^ ; and all 
forces are carried in its womb, where they only wait for proper 
occasions to give forth the most frightful births that belong to 
time. 

"The Spirit of Party, just so far as it pre vails, and especially 
after it begins to assume a fanatical complexion, holds the soul, 
which is the subject of it, alwa} T s in an atmosphere of unholy pas- 
sion, where all ideas of truth and virtue are exposed to danger. 
The mind jields itself, more or less, to the dominion of one idea; 
verges, as we say, towards monomania. Truth in the end is treated 
with as little respect as charity ; honest}^ and simplicity do, as it 
were, make to themselves wings and fly away, like an angel towards 
heaven. Who in truth looks for integrity and fair dealing where 
Part} T Spirit runs high ? 

" And is it not equally unfavorable to all intellectual freedom and 
sound knowledge ? In the investigation of truth how much depends 
on the right state of the affections. These are always more or less 
the medium, through which the various objects of knowledge are 
contemplated. Let them become diseased or exorbitant in any 
way, and at once eveiything that stands in connection with them is 
made to appear in a false light and under a distorted form. Opinion 
is always mighty, where a man has come to move and have his 
being in its n^stic circle, and such a power not only swa} T s the 
will, but becomes the very light of thought itself. In this way 



Chap. XIII] address on party spirit 121 

parties often create for themselves both reason and will of their 
own. What they will to be true, and choose to call so, in the light 
of such wilful opinion itself, is made to seem truth. A Bartholomew 
massacre may seem only a fit occasion for chanting a Te Deum in all 
the churches. 

" A mind enthralled by the authority of a party is in a false posi- 
tion for seeing the Truth. Its inquiries are continually subordi- 
nated to another interest. Hence it contracts also a narrow and an 
illiberal character, which goes with it in all its speculations. Free- 
dom, comprehensive energy, and clear strong vision, are not to be 
looked for in these circumstances. Thus the Spirit of Party is 
opposed to all true greatness of soul. 

" Is it necessary to dwell upon the unhappy fruits of Party Spirit, 
as it is felt in the regions of politics ? In such a country as ours, 
they are of a character to be known and read by all. At what an 
expense of virtue, with what wreck of principle, are not our party 
struggles ordinarily conducted through the entire nation ? The 
very earth is, as it were, made to shake at times by reason of its 
commotions. Evil passions are let loose ; false tongues vibrate ; 
words full of poison fly as arrows ; pens, dipped in gall, strike like 
the fang of an angry viper ; and the Press scatters in all directions 
coals of juniper, grapeshot and death. J\ T o character is sacred — no 
principle is safe. — 111 must it fare, in such a hurly-burly of the pas- 
sions, with the real interests of the country, which are made the 
ostensible cause of all the excitement. Zeal for these in truth is 
generally the smallest element in the composition of the moral 
whirlwind. They are sacrificed and trampled under foot — more or 
less by all parties. Legislation, measures of State, economical 
policy, in a word, all public interests, fall hopelessly into the net. 
It is well if even the seat of judgment can escape. 

"Science, too, may have her parties; it has had them with like 
effect. Sad for her, indeed, has been the fanaticism of creeds alike 
sworn to do her homage. The time has been, when it lay like an: 
embargo on all free use of mind. A chemical mixture could not 
change from blue to red, from transparent to opaque ; an apple would 
not fall to the ground ; nay, the planets might not swing through 
their orbits without kindling angiy feuds in colleges. It was not 
believed, or not felt, that knowledge is always the friend of man 
and his coadjutor, or that error is his enemy. Theories are still 
serving at times as rallying points of genuine party zeal. In medi- 
cine, particularly, it may be long before either science or art shall 
cease to be embarrassed from this cause. 



122 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

"But what Science has suffered from parties, Religion suffers 
in full measure to this present hour. Need it be said that the Spirit 
of Party is directly opposed to the Spirit of the Gospel ? The one 
destroys what the other would build up. It drinks up the life blood 
of the Church; cuts the sinews of faith and prayer; and blunts the 
edge of all spiritual motives. The still small voice of the Spirit 
cannot be heard where it reigns. Truth also finds no mercy under 
its hands. Shorn of her vital spirit, she is retained and honored at 
the best onlj T as an embalmed corpse; a bandaged mummy, stiff and 
still; with a creed for its sarcophagus. Dogmas are substituted for 
ideas. Words absorb things. S} T inbols rule faith. Theolog}', spring- 
ing from the brain only, stands forth Minerva-like in complete 
armor, belligerent, ripe at all times for battle. The Church is 
known mainly as a scene of death-dealing strife. The chief care is 
for her munitions and magazines of war. All her learning and dis- 
cipline look in that way. The very Bible is turned into an armory. 
Exegesis must bend to the authority of s} T stem. imposition be- 
comes imposition — sense put into the text, not drawn from it; and 
Revelation is used only as a mirror, where a man sees the forms of 
his previous thoughts reflected back upon him as oracles from God. 

"Part}' Spirit is specious in its pretensions,. insidious in its ap- 
proaches to the human heart, promises much with its flattering 
tongue, and grows out of man's crooked fallen nature. Hence, 
good men sometimes fall under its control before they are aware of 
it, and are found like Saul of Tarsus in open war with truth and 
innocence, whilst all the time they are manifestly fighting God 
Himself. As the world now is, a new truth, or what seems to be 
new, is not allowed to make a step in advance before it is con- 
fronted with the partisan, who disputes its further progress, and 
then the fight begins. In the end, after many hard fought battles, 
the Truth gains the victory, but the factious opposition deserves 
none of the credit, although, without intending anything of the 
kind, it has actually promoted the interest which it had all along 
opposed. Good comes out of evil, but the latter should be none 
the less abhorred. Every one of us should look upon it as a viper 
and seek to shake it off from our persons. 

"Say not then," as Dr. Xevin interpolates in his address, "I 
would have been this or that in an}' given state of societ} T which 
thou hast not tried ; or, at least, saj T it onby as thou hast faith in 
God. And be fully sure that without this faith strongly at work, 
thou hast even now a factious life made up of the mere reverberations 
of opinions around thee, far be} T ond what thou hast ever dreamed. 



Chap. XIII] address on party spirit 123 

" Reflection upon the nature, tendencies and evil fruits of Party 
Spirit will accomplish something, much in overcoming its tyrannic 
sway over our minds. Such knowledge will be useful in propor- 
tion as it brings the individual to see that it is of the nature of a 
disease, and not the nominal activity of a truly enlightened and 
generous mind. But knowledge here at best can only serve to pre- 
pare the way for the cure of a malady by the elevation of the mind 
itself in a positive way above the level of the mere partisan, who 
in principle is not much above the prize-fighter. Communion with 
the great and good of all ages has a peculiarly refining and elevat- 
ing character. Here on our own soil we are favored with a name, 
which carries with it a sacred authority, and it is the richest boon 
which Providence has conferred on the American people. The 
example of Washington, the true patriot, the pure statesmen, the 
glory of his country, the wonder of the world, is worth more for 
us as a people than all that he accomplished in war. It is a living 
fountain of virtue still, from which a salutary influence may be 
expected to flow in perennial streams through all time. Sympathy 
with the mind of Washington ma} T be recommended especially, as 
a most excellent antidote to the vile Spirit of Party. 

" We may for a moment glance at exemplars, which look down 
upon us from a yet loftier height. The philosophy of. the skies 
embodied in the mind of Plato, or transcribed from the life of his 
master Socrates, is found to have, a wonderfully plastic power on 
all who converse intelligent^ with his writings to this day. Let 
me here recommend them as a liberalizing discipline in the case 
under consideration. 

" But more especially be exhorted to converse with the mighty 
spirits, which in different ages have drunk most deeply of the in- 
spiration of evangelical truth. In proportion as this has been true 
of them, you will find them soaring always above the bigotiy of 
sects and parties ; and in their company you can hardly fail to come 
yourselves, in some measure, under the power of those broad, 
Catholic principles of Christianity, which appear so full of majesty, 
and worthy of all reverence in their persons. Such virtue is found 
still embalmed as a fragrant odor in the memory of the meek and 
gentle Melanchthon and others of like spirit with him. 

" Take Paul himself as an examplar to be studied, admired, imi- 
tated to the end of life. Where will you find among men a more 
splendid exhibition of living greatness ? His mind still lives, the 
shrine of all that is lofty and large in human character, in his history, 
and especially in his writings. Possessed of the finest natural 



124 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

endowments, he rose, subsequently to his memorable conversion, to 
an intimacy with the great themes of religion, which imparted the 
highest vigor to all his faculties, whilst it purified and refined his 
affections, and established the most complete order and harrnony 
in his whole spirit. Who can come into the presence of such a man 
and not be affected with the sublime clignit}" of religion, as it shines 
through his whole spirit, and stands embodied in his person? And 
who can gaze on such a character for an} 7 time without feeling that 
it belongs to a region high above the common agitations of the 
world, and wishing to ascend the same pure heights ? Parties in 
the Church Catholic he regarded with abhorrence as the pest of re- 
ligion, and as the bane of that heaven-born charity, in which essen- 
tially he supposed the power of the Gospel to consist. Party 
Spirit must ever shrink abashed in his presence, just as soon as 
the man himself is truly known and his presence felt. 

" In a word, the genius of the Gospel is irreconcilably at war with 
the Spirit of Party. That is lofty, large, and free. It owns no 
affinity with whatever is selfish or malignant in thought or life. 
Its home is in the heavens and it will not be bound b} T the narrow 
conceptions of men, nor stoop to please their illiberal passions. It 
is the mind of Jesus Christ Himself. There was no Party Spirit 
there As well might we expect to meet with it in Heaven.'' 

Such were Dr. Kevin's views in regard to Paiiry Spirit in general 
when he entered upon his duties at Mercersburg. They are given 
here as introductory to much of what he afterwards wrote on the 
subject of divisions, heresies, and schisms in the Church. They 
constitute, as we may say, the first bugle note of a long war which 
he waged against the Spirit of Sectism in favor of the unity of the 
Church, as we shall see hereafter. The Inaugural also shows the 
indications of a true Christian Platonism, which subsequently ex- 
panded and became an underlying element both in his theological 
and philosophical writings. We here give a few passages, which 
may be regarded as the philosophical antidote for narrowness of 
mind in general, no less than when it is led captive in the leading- 
strings of party. 

" The soul takes its quality and complexion always from the ob- 
jects with which it is accustomed most intimatel} 7 and habitually 
to converse. Such is the law of our- moral life. It is only then hy 
communion with what is absolutely true, and great, and good, that 
the original grandeur of our nature can ever be evolved in its full 
and just proportions. It is by gazing on the Holy and the Beau- 
tiful, as they are in themselves, that we recognize in the first place 



Chap. XIII] address on party spirit 125 

our own connatural interest in the skies, and are then changed into 
the same image, from glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord. 
Whatever may operate to restrain or hinder such contemplation, 
causing the necessary, the universal, to make room in our minds 
for the transient, and the particular, and circumscribing our vision 
by the visible horizon of Time, must be deprecated as an influence 
fatal to all true spiritual education. It would be so, even if it 
might be conceived of apart from all perverted and morbid views, 
in its domination. An exclusive communion with time things can- 
not fail to dwarf the soul, however honestly and fairly maintained. 
What, then, must it be in its injurious operation, when all false 
conceptions and all wrong feelings come in, as here in the case of 
Party Spirit, to aggravate its power, exaggerating, coloring, steal- 
ing fire from heaven, to animate dead clay into every imaginable 
show of fantastic life ! Ah ! how the spirit must sink, and become 
shriveled in its dimensions in circumstances like these ! 

" Soar in spirit above the region of sense and particular opinion, 
always darkened by the mists, if riot agitated by the storms of pas- 
sion; and let your home be, mainly at least, in the empyrean sphere 
of absolute and eternal truth. Much may be accomplished towards 
this end by the right use of mere science only. All true knowledge 
elevates, expands, rarities, if I may say so, the life of the soul. 
But especially is this the case with that divine philosophy, whose 
organ is the pure reason, and which has for its contemplation mainly 
the original and everlasting ideas of Religion itself. Even apart 
from revelation, such philosophy, as it meets us in the towering 
thoughts of the Grecian Plato, may well be denominated the mistress 
of an immortal mind. With him all inward illumination and sta- 
bility are found in communion with the ta onta as opposed to the 
ta phainomena, and nothing less than the to agathon, the self evi- 
dencing light of the Truth itself, will serve as the medium by which 
this communion is to be maintained. Conversing only with the 
world of time, through the medium of the senses, the soul is repre- 
sented as reeling in a sort of drunken delirium, with the fluctuating 
show on which it looks; but in the use of its own higher vision, it 
becomes itself again (Phaedo, Vol. 1, p. 126, Ed. Tauchnitz.) Thus 
exercised, as he tells us in another place, it cannot afford to stoop 
to the trivial interests with which men are commonly employed, so 
as to be filled with all malignant affections in struggling with them 
for such things; but aims rather in the steady contemplation of 
what is alwa3^s the same and always right, to be transformed into 
the same image. De Republica, Vol. Y, p. 230." 



CHAPTER XIV 

SO OX after Dr. Kevin's removal to Mercersburg, and a few days 
before his installation into office as professor, he was formally 
received into the Reformed Church by the Ciassis of Maryland. 
which met this year at Clearspring. Md., on the 16th of May. on 
his presenting his certificate of dismission from the Presbytery of 
Ohio. The Ciassis. after expressing its regret at the withdrawal 
of the Rev Dr. Mayer from further duty in the Seminary, and its 
appreciation of his past services, approved of the appointment of 
Dr. Xevin to fill the vacancy, and regarded it "as a special inter- 
position of Divine Providence, for which the German Reformed 
Church is under great obligations to return its gratitude to the 
great Head of the Church, at whose sovereign disposal are all our 
affairs."' The Ciassis. then, under some kind of inspiration that the 
set time had come for the Lord to visit Zion. and for the armies of 
Israel to move forward, earnestly discussed the question of holding 
a Centenary Celebration of the founding of the Reformed Church 
in this country. The result was an overture to Synod to appoint 
such a celebration for the year 1841. "as a means which would tend 
to give character and prominence to the Church, and add much in- 
terest to all her operations.** It was a wise suggestion, encouraging 
to the new professor, and. as we shall see. one which led to useful 
results, going far beyond anything which any of its movers had 
imagined. It was the feeble beginning of a great and good work. 
which from its start carried with it Dr. Xevin's strong personality. 
After he had been received into the Church, and duly inducted 
into his new office, noiselessly and unobtrusively he entered upon 
its duties, so that probably some of his students did not know 
what to make of him. As the principal professor in the Seminary, he 
had fully sufficient work to occupy all his time, especially if he was 
to be master of the situation, and to be abreast of the times. For 
any one of slower perceptions, no more labor of any kind could 
have been performed: but he soon saw that if the enterprise in 
which he had embarked was to succeed at all and not result in dis- 
astrous failure, his services were needed also in the practical work 
of the Church. He found himself surrounded by many earnest 
ministers and elders, who were praying and laboring with all their 
energies to bring about a better state of affairs, to awaken the 

(126) 



Chap. XI Y] writes for the messenger 127 

churches to a proper sense of their responsibility in the sight of 
God, and to induce the members at once to engage in building up 
the broken down walls of Zion. For many dreary years they had 
thus exerted themselves, but apparently without anything like ade- 
quate results. Some of the congregations were partially awake,, 
but some of them were still profoundly asleep. 

Dr. Nevin, with quick insight into things, soon came to under- 
stand the situation, in which he was placed, providentially, as he 
believed. Much preparatory work was needed to make the schools 
of learning what they ought to be, which in his mind were vitally 
connected with the prosperity of a large communion of churches. 
Accordingly he fell in fully with every movement that tended in 
any wa} T to promote the internal or external prosperity of the 
Church as a whole ; and for this kind of service he seemed to have 
been specially qualified. He had been himself once an editor, 
wrote with great facility, and he soon became a frequent corres- 
pondent of the Messenger. His articles were always to the point, 
that is, they had some practical or useful object in view, and they 
arrested attention. Usually they were long ; and although the 
printers tried to make them appear shorter, by the use of small 
type and crowding the lines as closely together as possible, yet for 
the most part they were what now-a-days would be regarded at 
once as long-winded. They were, nevertheless, read with interest 
by the ministry and the laity. The latter caught their drift, at 
least, and were sure that they contained valuable thoughts — not 
mere words. 

Under the impression, probably that what the German Churches 
needed most was more spirituality, he commenced a series of articles 
in the Messenger on the subject of " Worldly-mindedness," which 
were continued from June to August, six in number, and all long 
enough to be read and digested in hot weather only by the interest 
they inspired. They are written in the style of his Puritan educa- 
tion, solemn, earnest, abounding in refined distinctions and valu- 
able hints to guard against self deception, quite abreast of Dod- 
dridge, Edwards and other casuistic writers of the Puritan school, 
who in their efforts to make a simple matter still plainer sometimes 
make it more obscure. Respect for the Sabbath received its highest 
tension, and the reader is sometimes at a loss to know what kind 
of works of necessit}^ would be allowed on that &&y. But the 
articles abound with striking thoughts, which distinguish clearly 
between the carnal and the spiritual mind of scripture. The world 
is presented in its proper antithesis to the Kingdom of God, faith 



1/ 



128 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

to sight, and the higher spiritual nature of man to his lower, animal 
or psychic being. 

"Our connection with the world," he says, "is through the 
medium of our bodily nature. This grounds itself at present in 
the outward material world and takes hold of it continually by in- 
numerable relations, more or less intimately affecting our very 
existence itself. These relations give rise to wants, which right- 
fully challenge a large share of our thoughts. But after all, they 
do not exhaust by any means the proper idea of our existence. 
Rather, I should s&y, they take up in themselves but a small part 
of this idea. — The relations of the Spirit, as formed for holiness and 
immortality, are unspeakably more important, and give rise to in- 
terests of a far higher order than any that can spring from the other 
ground. These comprise the real and ultimate intention of our 
existence, and ought of right to hold the first place in our thoughts. 
Whatever may be due to the present world as such, it should be 
considered as having onry a seconclar}- claim upon our regard. Our 
life in time should be used always as something subordinate in all 
respects to our higher destination, as this lies in the constitution 
of the soul ; the scaffolding, so to speak, by Avhich our true spiritual 
being is to be raised and brought into view; a temporary, tran- 
sient form of existence, designed only to open the way education- 
ally for a more perfect state, in which, at last, it finds its proper 
meaning and value. This rio;ht estimate of outward interests, as 
compared with those of the Spirit, can never be wanting, where 
faith is in vigorous exercise. But so far as men are found destitute 
of this divine principle, they judge and act in a different way alto- 
gether. They mind earthly things ; bestow upon them their main 
consideration and care; and have no heart in comparison for ob- 
jects of a higher and more excellent nature. They make the world 
their portion." 

But it was not long before the new Professor discovered that his 
pen was needed to assist in carrying forward the more immediate 
practical operations of the Church, especial^ in giving a new im- 
pulse to its schools of learning. — The Rev. Bernard C. Wolff, pastor 
of the Reformed congregation at Easton, impressed with the un- 
satisfactory financial status of the institutions at Mercersburg, had 
obtained permission from his congregation to be absent for a part 
of a year in order to labor as agent for their better endowment. 
He had already been some time in the field, and wished to secure 
$10,000 before he left it. He saw in the Centenary Celebration a 
means by which this as well as many other useful objects might be 



Chap. XIV] an excursion 129 

secured, and he with others drew attention to it in the Messenger. 
Quick of discernment and enthusiastic by nature and -grace, he 
hailed it as an auspicious omen in the ecclesiastical skies. Dr. 
Nevin also saw in it the germ of a movement, which, if properly 
cherished, might be made to redound in an eminent degree to the 
growth and future prosperity of the Church. Accordingly when 
he had finished his essays on Worldly-mindedness, he began to 
write for the Messenger on the Centenary Celebration, in which, 
without any restraint as regards length, he showed how it should 
be conducted, explained its benefits, and proposed in conclusion 
that in connection with it the Church should make a thank-offering 
of $100,000 ; half of which should be given to the College, one fourth 
to the Seminary and the other fourth to beneficiaiy education or 
other benevolent objects. Thus he and others excited interest in 
the proposition of the Maryland Classis, so that by the time the 
Synod met in October following, the subject had been pretty well 
ventilated, and the delegates when they came together were pre- 
pared to vote. 

By the close of the Summer Term of the Seminaiy in September, 
1840, the new professor had become tolerably well acquainted with 
the English portions of the Church, in Maryland, Virginia and 
Central Pennsjdvania, which were regarded as the more progress- 
ive and intelligent. But he had seen little or nothing of that part 
of it which lay between the Delaware and Susquehanna, which was 
predominantly German, and b}^ far the largest in membership. 
Some of those who could not read or understand its language re- 
garded it as a benighted region, not far removed from Cimmerian 
darkness. Only one of the ministers from that section of the 
State had attended the meeting of the Synod at Chambersburg on 
account of distance and wintry weather, and the people had heard 
of the new professor for the most part only by vague rumors. It 
was therefore thought desirable that he should visit Eastern Penn- 
sylvania and place himself in a position to see it for himself. The 
Rev. Jacob Ma}^er had frequently gone over the ground and can- 
vassed it as agent for the College and Seminary, and he offered to 
take him along in his carriage on one of these trips. Travelling 
thus in a private conveyance from Chambersburg to Harrisburg, 
and from thence through Reading to Easton, with one who was fa- 
miliar with the ground, he enjoyed better opportunities of seeing 
the country than in any other way. John Adams and Martin Van 
Buren, two Presidents, once passed through it and admired it very 
much as an agricultural region and were surprised at its progress 



130 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. VIII 

and improvement ; and at a later period, as Dr. Xevin travelled 
over the same territory, lie saw not only its highly cultivated 
farms, its large barns, its herds of cattle, but also its school-houses 
and its numerous churches. 

Before he started out on his trip, it had been suggested to him 
that he might be asked to speak or preach in the German language 
during his tour, and that he should prepare himself to say some- 
thing at least in that language. He accordingly prepared a Ger- 
man sermon and carried the manuscript with him. It so turned 
out that the Rev. Thomas H. Leinbach requested him to preach 
for him in the old Tulpehocken Church in Berks County, and he 
complied with his request. Every body was pleased. The con- 
gregation felt themselves complimented b} T a discourse in their 
Own language from one who had gone to the trouble of mastering 
it by his own diligent study. No body smiled at wrong or imper- 
fect pronunciations, because they were in the house of the Lord. 
The German clergymen present may have done so the next day 
over their pipes among themselves. The report of this discourse 
had a happ} T effect amongst those who heard of it in East Penn- 
sylvania. It was, however, to Dr. Nevin, an effort which he did 
not repeat afterwards. 

Speaking of the country through which he had travelled, in a 
letter published afterwards in the Weekly Messenger , he said : " A 
large part of the country was new to me. It is surely one of the 
finest in the world. Where shall we find a count ly of the same ex- 
tent that offers a greater show of loveliness and strength externally 
considered than that which spreads out to the eye of the traveller 
as he passes from Harrisburg to Reading, and afterwards through 
the counties of Lehigh and Northampton, till he finds himself on 
the banks of the Delaware. 

" The sight of so many fine churches," he goes on to say, " scat- 
tered over this whole section of country, is highl} T interesting and 
animating. These alone are an evidence that the people to whom 
they belong are favorably disposed to religion. Lender proper di- 
rection the same spirit that prompts them to bestow so much atten- 
tion on their places of worship ma\ T easily be brought to act with 
corresponding liberality and zeal in support of all other interests 
of a religious kind. 

"There are many things to be lamented in the state of our 
churches in East Penns}dvania, but it is my full persuasion that 
this section of our German Church has been greatly wronged by 
judgments taken from a wrong point of observation on the part of 



Chap. XIV] an excursion 131 

those who have not been willing to make themselves fully acquaint- 
ed with its modes of thinking. The day for such prejudices, it is 
to be hoped, will soon pass away." 

The favorable opinion of the Pennsylvania Germans, as thus ex- 
pressed, was no doubt strengthened by the interest manifested in 
the institutions at Mercersburg, and the willingness on the part of 
the people everywhere to unite in the celebration of the proposed 
Centennial of the founding of the Reformed Church in this country 
during the following year. At that time the subject had been 
broached in the papers of the Church as we have seen ; and it had 
begun to be circulated through the churches that it was proposed 
that they should unite in making a thank-offering of $100,000 for 
religious purposes, including the College and Seminary. Twenty 
or thirty } 7 ears previous to this, such a proposition as this would 
have met with open opposition. But during this excursion Mr. 
Ma} T er, without any special effort on his part, met with five persons, 
who volunteered to give $500 towards the Centennial effort, in case 
it should be carried out b}^ the churches, and others expressed their 
willingness to act with similar liberality in the future, if the Synod 
should recommend the measure. The proposition to raise so large 
an amount of money at that time for the institutions at Mercers- 
burg, which some had thought would frighten the whole Church, 
was not regarded as anything formidable. Man} T of the laity 
thought it could be done. 

This overland trip ended at East on, on the banks of the Delaware, 
where the party were entertained by the two pastors alternately, 
the Rev. Bernard C. Wolff, pastor of the English portion of the con- 
gregation and the Rev. Thomas Pomp, a venerable patriarch in the 
Reformed Israel, now verging on his three score and ten years, still 
active in serving the German portion in town and country. They 
were both representative men in their day, admirable and respect- 
able each in his own way. The one embodied in himself the old life 
of the Church in its best form ; the other, the new in its progres- 
sive, historical and practical character. Both were much interested 
in the institutions at Mercersburg and warm personal friends of 
Dr. Rauch. Here Dr. Nevin learned something that was useful to 
him in his work ; and he was a good listener as well as a good talker. 
In Mr. Pomp's library he found some valuable literature bearing on 
the Heidelberg Catechism, more particularly Van Alpen's Ge- 
schichte und Liter atur des Heidelberg^ sch en Katechismus, which, 
with other works of like character bearing on the same topic, he was 
looking for. He took it for granted that there was some general 



132 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

animus or spirit, pervading the German Reformed Church as some- 
thing distinct from the Lutheran and other evangelical churches. 
This he found in its genial Catechism, in its historical surroundings, 
and, after careful study of its fifty-two questions and answers, 
preaching on them all on one Lord's Daj- after another, he was 
enabled to bring out in clear and distinct outlines its meaning or 
sense on the printed page, as had never been done before in this 
countiy. To do this successfully was a problem that was not easy 
to solve. The Reformed ministers and people knew what it was, 
but were somewhat at a loss to express it. It was a matter of 
consciousness, a part of their life, rather than of clear definition. 
Hence when it came to expression in the writings of Dr. Nevin, it 
was readily recognized in all of its family features. The study of 
the Catechism, pre-eminent as a comprehensive form of sound words 
in the Evangelical Church, had much to do in transforming Dr. Nevin 
from a somewhat harsh Presbyterian divine into a broader German 
theologian, of the Calvinistic-Melanchthonian school, so far as his 
nature would permit of such a change. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE Reformed Synod met in the latter part of October, 1840, 
at Greencastle, Pa., not far from Mercersburg, and about the 
same distance from Chambersburg, where the editors of the Church 
papers and most of the Church treasurers resided. All parts of the 
denomination were well represented, the advisory members, of whom 
Dr. Nevin was one, being about as numerous as those that were 
regular delegates. Rev. Bernard C. Wolff was chosen to preside. 
A general feeling of hopefulness and confidence seemed to predom- 
inate, which presented a strong contrast to what prevailed in some 
of the preceding Synods, especially in the one that was held in 
Philadelphia in 1839. The dark clouds, which had hung over the 
Church, and over the Seminary in particular, had in a measure 
passed away, and better times seemed to be looming up under the 
blue sky of hope. The action of the S}<nod at Chambersburg in the 
election of a new theological professor was heartily approved. The 
matter of holding a Centennial Celebration during the following 
year occupied much of the time of the Synod, and every member 
seemed anxious to give it as wide and useful a range as possible. 
In reliance upon Almighty God, the year 1841, therefore, was set 
apart as a solemn festival of thanksgiving, prayer and praise ; 
sermons and historical discourses were to be delivered ; the churches 
were to bring their thank-offerings to the Lord, and to unite in rais- 
ing $100,000 at least for its struggling schools of learning, missions, 
beneficiary education, or other objects; subscription books were to 
be opened in all the pastoral charges, containing separate columns for 
each specific object; the brethren in the West were invited to unite 
in the celebration ; a circular was to be addressed to the reverend 
fathers and brethren in the Reformed Church of the Fatherland to 
assist in observing the first Centenary of the existence of the Re- 
formed Church in America; and a circular or address was to be 
sent to all the Ministers, Consistories, and members of the German 
Reformed Church in the United States, with Christian greeting with 
grace and peace to all, in the name of Christ, on this interesting 
and important subject. This latter document, prepared by the Rev. 
Daniel Zacharias, and read to a full Synod, was very able, and also 
eloquent. It presented in a clear and forcible manner the propriety 
of such a movement, and earnestly urged all the people to take part 

(133) 



134 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

in it. If set forth the duty of gratitude to God for the past ; the 
importance of a better acquaintance with the histoiy, doctrines and 
usages of the Church; the necessit}- of going forward in building 
up the various institutions of the Church, literary, theological, and 
benevolent, calling for $100,000, at least, to meet the demands of 
the times ; but very property holding it "as the primary object of 
the celebration, to arouse the entire Church from Dan to Beersheba, 
to awaken an increased attention to. vital godliness, and to raise a 
more elevated standard of Christian piety and responsibility among 
us as a people." 

This message went down from the Synod to the congregations, 
and was eveiy where received with attention and respect. Subscrip- 
tion books were opened in par^oral charges generalty, and such 
simple agencies were made use of as seemed necessary to allow the 
movement to have free course and spontaneous action among the 
people. The remainder of the } T ear was thus occupied, in earnest 
thought and reflection, so that all things might be ready for active 
operation at the opening of the coining } T ear. In the Weekly Mes- 
senger for the 8th of January, we accordingly find indications 
already of active operations. In the congregation at Easton a ser- 
vice had been held in the German and English languages, and after 
a brief address \>y Rev. Mr. Mayer, the agent of the Seminaiy, $1200 
had been subscribed hy fourteen individuals, with the prospect of 
a large increase, as others should make their larger or smaller con- 
tributions. From Xorth Carolina the Rev. John G. Fritsehey 
writes, that although the churches in his Classis were for the most 
part feeble, yet he expected that the people of his charge would 
raise at least one thousand dollars ; and the Rev. John Casper Bucher 
says, that his Consistory in Middletown, Md., had pledged them- 
selves for $4,000, one-half of which had alread} T been subscribed; 
and that some other congregations in the Classis might or could do 
more. 

At Mercersburg a very enthusiastic meeting had been held 
under the direction of the Classis, at which quite a number of gen- 
erous contributions were made. Dr. Rauch pledged himself for 
$500, and Professor Bucld for the same amount. Others in the con- 
gregation and on the outside subscribed also liberally. The ladies 
in the Presbyterian congregation had nearly raised the money for a 
scholarship of $500 in Marshall College; on the Reformed side, the 
ladies were trying to do the same thing ; and twenty students in the 
Institutions had engaged to raise $25 each in five years to complete 
a scholarship of their own. Dr. Nevin gave $1,000 for himself and 



Chap. XT] the centennial celebration 135 

family, which was probably the largest amount contributed during 
the Centenary year. He thought the whole sum would not fall short 
of $4,000, and was confident that it would in the end be much larger. 
Thus the festal year was opened, and it may be said that it re- 
tained its character as such throughout. It was formally closed on 
the 25th of December, in all the churches as a general Thanksgiving 
Day, on which devotional services were held early in the morning, 
and a suitable sermon preached afterwards at 11 o'clock A. M. As 
some of the congregations were prevented by circumstances from 
taking part with the rest in the celebration during the year, it was 
extended over another year, which was not without its good effects. 
Much seriousness and earnestness were infused into this movement 
throughout: it was therefore successful and spoke for itself. Most 
probably over $100,000 were subscribed by the Reformed people 
during the year, although for various reasons a considerable amount 
was never paid in as is usual in such cases. The largest portion 
was given for scholarships in the College, but every public interest 
in the Church was benefited, including her two weekly papers, 
English and German, which took a new start and increased their 
circulation. The movement became general in the East, where all 
the congregations were affected b} T it more or less, and the scattered 
congregations in the West, standing in no connection with the 
mother Synod in the East, felt its influence also, blowing as a health- 
ful breeze over the mountains from the homes and churches in 
which the older members had been reared in their youth. No such 
an uprising in the Reformed Church had ever occurred before. 
Under all the circumstances it was something remarkable, fully jus- 
tifying the good opinions of the Germans, as expressed by Dr. 
Nevin, that the "people to whom so many fine churches, and barns 
also, belonged were favorably disposed to religion; and that under 
proper direction the same spirit that prompted them to bestow so 
much attention on their places of worship may easily be brought 
to act with corresponding liberality and zeal in support of all other 
interests of a religious kind." This Centenary Year was a memora- 
ble one in the history of the Church, was in fact an epoch, and the 
beginning of a new and prosperous period. For a number of years 
there had been more or less division, doubt and uncertainty in the 
Church, and a serious want of confidence. At the beginning of the 
year 1840 lowering clouds hung over the Seminary and the skies 
seemed to be the darkest. By the end of the next year confidence 
and unity had been restored, and never before had the future ap- 
peared so promising. 



136 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

Under these circumstances the Centennial 3-ear closed amidst 
general rejoicings and thanksgivings in the churches, on which oc- 
casion the following hymn was sung, prepared for the occasion by 
Mrs. Lj'dia Jane Peirson, the sweet singer of Tioga Count} T , Pa., 
the Authoress of the "Forest Minstrel " and "Forest Leaves :" 

Thou who art enthroned in Glory, 

Crowned with love and robed in Grace, 

Let us humbly bow before Thee, 
Off 'ring up our songs of praise. 

Mighty God and gracious Saviour ! 

Spirit of enduring grace, 
Come in thine especial favor 

With Thy Glory fill this place. 

See the Star whose rising splendour 

Heralded a Saviour's birth, 
Now in its meridian grandeur, 

Smiles upon the joyous earth. 

Heart and hand and effort blending 

In its radiance now we meet ; 
And our mingled praj T ers ascending 

Seek Thee on Thy mercy-seat. 

We would celebrate the changes, 

Which a Hundred Years have made, 
Since our fathers — poor and strangers — 

Sought the Western forest shade. 

From Helvetia's vine clad mountains 

Came a little friendless band ; 
By the rich Rhine's infant fountains 

Others left their fatherland. 

Thou went with them o'er the ocean 
To those wilds where freedom straj-'d, 

'Neath her bowers, with true devotion, 
First these grateful pilgrims pray'd. 

Here the little vine, increasing, 

Spread its branches green and fair ; 
Now, by Thine especial blessing, 

See how wide Thy vineyards are. 

Humble are the gifts we offer. 

Bless them in Thy grace divine ; 
Thou wilt not despise the proffer, 

Though the universe is Thine. 



Chap. XY] the centennial celebration 13*7 

Make our gifts a rich oblation, 

Many a mourning heart to cheer ; 
While the light of Thy salvation 

Yields each penitential tear. 

Let our Institutions nourish, 

Sending forth a pious band, 
With the words of life to nourish 

All who hunger through the land. 

Zion spreads her hands before Thee ; 

Come, and in her temples reign, 
While we give all praise and glory 

To the Triune God. — Amen. 



CHAPTER XVI 

BUT just as the Centennial movement had been started under 
the most favorable auspices, and the Church as a whole had 
caught a new inspiration, the destining angel came in. Dr. Rauch, 
upon whom so much was built and from whom so much was reason- 
ably expected, took sick and died at his post at Mercersburg, on 
the 2nd of March, 1841. It was a severe blow to the friends of the 
Institutions generally , and to none more so than to Dr. Xevin. Never 
before did the wa} T s of Providence appear to all concerned more 
strange and nwsterious than in the death of the first President of 
Marshall College. In the fall of 1840, it had become apparent that 
his physical and mental energies had been overtaxed, and that his 
strength was failing. He, however, was still young in years, and it 
was difficult to believe that the end of his career was so near at 
hand. But as he was about to begin the preparation of his treatise 
on Christian Ethics for the press, he was confined to the bed from 
which he never rose again. — He was stricken down just at a time 
when his presence in the College seemed to be most needed, and 
his loss, tragic in appearance, seemed to all alike irreparable. It 
was a sad day to the professors and students when they came to 
realize the fact that Dr. Rauch, the amiable Christian gentleman, 
the polished scholar, the profound philosopher and theologian, and 
the paternal President of Marshall College, was no more. A similar 
feeling of profound sorrow pervaded the community and the Church 
generally, when his unexpected death was announced through the 
public papers. His funeral was largely attended, and mai^ spoke 
with tears in their ej'es of this sad visitation of divine Providence. 
It was still cheerless winter, and the skies which were of a leaden 
hue seemed to sympathize with the occasion, and, as we approached 
the grave, in a gentle shower of rain to shed down their own drops 
of grief. He was buried on the College ground, in the midst of a 
grove of venerable oaks, where the winds, during summer and win- 
ter blowing mournfully through the trees, seemed to sing his sad 
> requiem. 

In the course of time his remains were removed to Lancaster, 
where they now repose in the college plot in the Lancaster Ceme- 
tery. It was thought that their most appropriate resting place 
should be under the shadow of the College which he loved so well. 

(138) 



Chap. XVI] sketch of dr. rauch 139 

An appropriate monument was erected to his memory in the Col- 
lege campus by the Alumni of the College and other admiring 
friends. On one side of the shaft in a recess he is represented as 
sitting in his study with his books around him, burning the mid- 
night oil, still studying the phenomena of mind, with a Bible before 
him. On the other side is a hemisphere, just rising out of chaos, 
representing Europe and America on its surface, in which the Old 
and New Worlds are united in one and the same view, which serves 
as an illustration of his Anglo-German philosophy. 

In the year 1887, a fellow countryman, a youthful studiosus from 
Berlin, meditating at his grave, composed his funeral dirge from 
which we here extract a few of the introductory verses : 

Has tuas inferias vates, Frederice, fidelis, 

Hsec tibi pro meritis munera solvo tuis ; 
Quandoquidem viridi nobis te sustulit sevo, 

Quae nihil egregium mors sinit esse diu 
Flere tuos obitus jubet illud amabile quondam 

Nunc interruptse fceclus amicitia?. 
Namque etiam tumulis suus est honor, inque sepultos 

Mens pia flebilibus testificanda modis ; 
Et mortem, vitse testem, nnemque laborum 

Laudibus ornatam convenit esse suis. 

Dr. Ranch died literally but not really, for he has continued to 
live in the affections of those who knew him, and more especialry 
in the Institutions to whose founding he had devoted the best en- 
ergies of his mind and heart, and in which the intellectual work he 
inaugurated continued to go forward as before under his inspiration. 
As his influence on the mind of Dr. Nevin was considerable in the 
development, more particular^, of his philosophical views, it is 
proper that we 'should here put on record some account of his fel- 
low-laborer, on whom he had built so many expectations. The in- 
fluence came in the way of suggestion, and served to awaken still 
more his Platonic frame of mind. 

Dr. Frederick Augustus Ranch was born at Kirchbracht in Hesse 
Darmstadt, Germany, July 27, 1806. His father was a Reformed 
minister in the Evangelical Church, with which he fully sympathized 
without losing his Reformed faith, and served a parish in the neigh- 
borhood of Frankfort-on-the-Main. The son studied successively in 
the Universities of Marburg, Giessen and Heidelberg; became a 
lecturer and author, and was on the eve of an appointment as pro- 
fessor at Heidelberg, when it became necessary for him to take his 
flight to America. With the professors and students of the Ger- 



110 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. YIII 

man universities generally, he was in sympathy with the spirit of 
free institutions awakened in the Fatherland after the Napoleonic 
wars. The assassination of Kotzebue hy Sand, a political madman, 
in 1819, aroused the suspicions of the German rulers, and their fears 
that other forms of government might take the place of their own, 
which could no longer bear the test of enlightened criticism. As a 
natural result, the policy of repression and secret espionage became 
the order of the da} r , especially on the part of the governments that 
were the smallest and the most insignificant. Many of the students 
or teachers in the universities — cupicli rerum novarum^— accord- 
ingly, were compelled to take their flight and seek hospitable homes 
in the United States. Among the most distinguished of these were 
Follen, Lieber and Rauch. The last mentioned was known to be 
free in the expression of liberal sentiments, and as he was supposed 
to have spoken too freely on the subject of government on a public 
occasion, in order to escape imprisonment or some other public 
disgrace, he found it necessary to take his flight to America in 
1831. — What was a loss to Germany by such banishments was much 
gain to our own country. 

In 1832 Dr. Rauch took charge of the High School of the Re- 
formed Church at York, Pa. In 1833 he became professor of Bib- 
lical Literature in the Theological Seminary in the same place; and 
when the High School was removed to Mercersburg in 1835 and 
changed into Marshall College in 1836, he became its first Presi- 
dent. He was eminent as a linguist, took a deep interest in Natural 
History, but was most at home in the different departments of 
Philosoplry in its bearings on Christianity and the Bible ; and this 
latter became to him more and more a specialty. In philosophy 
he was what has been sometimes called an idealistic realist, which 
he regarded as the outcome of philosophy in German}^, France and 
England. 

When Dr. Rauch received his philosophical training in German}', 
the sj-stem of Kant was already waning; Schelling, Fichte and 
Hegel had appeared above the horizon as stars of surpassing brill- 
iancy, and he naturally fell in with the reaction against Kant. He, 
however, had faith in God, in Nature, and Man, and claimed for 
the human reason its heaven-born prerogatives and rights. In his 
lectures and writings he did not give place by subjection for an 
hour to- agnosticism. He reverenced Leibnitz and Kant as fathers 
of a great philosophic movement in German} 1 -, whose systems had 
alread}' had their day, had been useful as they prepared the way 
for something better, and therefore were instructive still. His 



Chap. XYI] eulogium by dr. nevin 141 

teachers belonged to the better class of Hegelians, but it is easy 
to see from his Psychology that he was by no means wedded to 
the dry and abstract intellectualism of Hegel. This able work 
shows throughout traces of Schelling, Schubert and StefFens even 
more perhaps than of Hegel. The author possessed a vivid imagi- 
nation and had too much love for the reality of things to live in 
mere abstractions or idealistic clouds. A lover and admirer of 
the giants in German philosophy, he could not be said correctly 
to be the slave of any particular sj^stem. 

Dr. Rauch's philosophy, which in substance was what in the 
course of time came to be called " Mercersburg Philosophy," was 
virtually the same as that of Carl Daub, one of his theological 
teachers at Heidelberg, who had mastered all the S3 T stems of phil- 
osophy as the} r rose successively around him, and adopted the 
good and the true in all of them, without losing his faith in the 
Bible or divine things. Tholuck styles him " a hierophant in the 
temple of knowledge, who, as a theologian from the commencement 
of his activity as a writer in the sphere of divinity to the end of 
his life, kept himself perpetually in the heights of the philosophic 
culture of his time throughout all its epochs ; " and the same author 
describes him, according to Dr. Nevin, as more bold and daring in 
this respect than Schleiermacher, who contrived to steer himself 
over the floods with which he was surrounded, in the bark of his 
youthful longings, to the shore, where the form of the Saviour met 
him again in the light of childhood's faith. But Daub, in the spirit 
of a daring Peter, without any vessel, threw himself into the 
waves, and made his way through them, upheld by his Saviour's 
hand. The waters only served to wash him clean. Rosenkranz 
describes him "as a genuine Church Father of Protestant The- 
ology, than whom no theologian could be more orthodox, while at 
the same time no one could be more rational." 

"Dr. Rauch," says Dr. Nevin in his Eulogium, "believed and felt 
that Hegel's philosophy had wrought a reform in the whole world of 
mind, especially in the way of rightly defining the true objects and 
proper bounds of the different sciences, and settling the general 
method by which they should be cultivated. Under this view, it 
seemed to him certain that the interests of truth itself were identified 
to no small extent with its authority and influence. In these cir- 
cumstances he felt himself impelled to attempt the work of transfer- 
ring in some measure into the literature of this country, not Hegel's 
philosophy as such, nor the metaphysics of Germany as a distinct 
and separate interest, but the life and power of German thinking 



142 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. VIII 

generally, under its more recent forms, in all that relates to the 
phenomenology of the soul. He was at home in the philosophy of 
Great Britain as well as in that of his own country, and knew ac- 
curately the points of contact and divergenc} T hy which the rela- 
tions of the two s}'stems to one another, generally considered, are 
characterized. 

" He knew that a simple transfer of German thought into English 
forms of expression was not what the interests of learning required 
in this country ; but that it is only hj being reproduced in new 
creations, from a mind transfused with their inward power and at 
the same time at home in the American element of thought, that 
they can be expected to become truhy and permanently valuable. 
The idea of such a reproduction of the moral wealth of Germany, 
under forms intelligible and safe, in the sphere of our American 
philosophy, may be considered perhaps the favorite dream of Dr. 
Rauch's life. It animated him in his work as a teacher. It stimu- 
lated his zeal as a writer. His work on Psychology was only the 
beginning of what he had in contemplation to attempt in this way 
for the interests of literature. In his own judgment much more 
important than this work was to have been his Christian Ethics; 
and to make the conception more complete, the Moral Philosophy 
was to be succeeded by a treatise on ^Esthetics. It was only when 
all should be brought out, that he expected the true character of 
the primary work to be fully seen. 

"The religious views of Dr. Rauch may be characterized as having 
been spiritual as well as sound. His orthodoxy did not rest in the 
dead letter, neither did it stop where the fancied superior illumina- 
tions of some that affect to despise the letter is found to stop, in 
the mere speculative faculty as such. This he regarded as the es- 
sence of neology; and because it appeared to him that much of our 
theolog}^ rested upon no deeper ground than this, he considered it 
to be in principle unsafe, needing only a suitable change of circum- 
stances, to be seen vanishing ultimate^ into thin air. Truth with 
him was something vastly deeper, which could be appreciated only 
by entering into the life of its possessor. Thus was the invisible 
felt to be real, while the outward and sensible might be regarded 
but as the shadow projected from it on the field of space. Innumer- 
able analogies, adumbrations and correspondencies, not obvious to 
common minds, seemed to be present habitually to his view, bind- 
ing the universe into one sublime whole, the earth reflecting the 
heavens and the waves of eternity echoing on the shores of time. 

ik There was, perhaps, in this respect, a clash of mysticism in his 



Chap. XYI] eulogium by dr. nevin 143 

constitution. And yet, perhaps not, or at least, if such a habit be 
mysticism, it may be a question, whether it be after all so bad a 
thing as is sometimes imagined. Our philosophy and religion in 
this country would both probably gain something if they looked 
less to the outward and more to the inward. Olshausen was Dr. 
Rauch's favorite commentator on the Scriptures, and he is counted 
commonly to be somewhat mystical. But what morally healthy 
man would exchange the fresh rotund life, with which he is here 
met, for the cold, clear, skeleton-like abstractions, that grin upon 
him from a different sphere, in the exposition of a Grotius, a Rosen- 
mueller or a MacKnight? We are too apt in this country to smile 
at the facility with which the German makes his escape from the 
world of the five senses to soar with transcendental flight beyond 
the clouds, or hold communion with 'spirits of the vasty deep,' 
w r hich he finds, or seems to find, shoreless and bottomless, in the 
centre of his very being. The contemplation on the other hand 
may well be pardoned, while he smiles in return at our excessive 
practicality, and blesses himself that he has not been formed to 
look at the plrysically useful as the measure of all good, and to 
value thought only as it can be made objective in the shape of 
steam, or turned into some merchantable commodity for the use 
of the market. But it may be doubted whether in the end his mys- 
ticism be not something full as near to the habit of a well poised 
mind as our own more practical scepticism. After all, that is a 
poor existence which makes man superior to superstition only by 
annihilating to his consciousness all that cannot be reached by his 
senses, and breaking in fact the link that should hold him in com- 
munion with the universe of spirit to which he belongs. 

" Such in his life and general character was the late President of 
Marshall College. To some, possibly, this eulogy may sound ex- 
travagant. There are those, probably, who will find it hard to be 
persuaded that so great a man has been among them, without their 
having been able to perceive his presence. It is so hard for us to 
understand and estimate properly living worth of a moral or intel- 
lectual sort, when it is brought home to our very doors. Seen at a 
great distance, in some other literary station, Dr. Rauch might 
easily have been honored by some here as an extraordinary man, to 
whom he has been all along near at hand only of the most moder- 
ate importance under any view. Had he lived five 3^ears longer, he 
w r ould have lifted the village, with the College, into the view of the 
whole land. Marshall College has sustained an immense loss in 
his death. For the German Church, indeed, in the present crisis 



144 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

in her history, it has seemed to many, that his life might be held 
to be indispensable. At this point precisely, when his whole exist- 
ence, which had passed all needful preparatory stages, seemed 
read} r at length to reach its proper intention, by efflorescing and 
yielding its full measure of fruit, we find it as it were touched at 
the core with a deadly secret blight. The light is extinguished in 
sudden darkness — as it was, however, with all his wish to live, he 
declared himself ready to acquiesce in the divine will, if it should 
lead to a different result. 

" In view of a dispensation so affecting, our feelings find no 
proper relief, except in the consideration that earth's changes after 
all do not come and go by chance. In the midst of all this vanity 
and mockery of human hopes, unerring wisdom, combined with 
infinite goodness, presides over the whole mysterious econonrr of 
life. That which it is difficult or impossible to understand now, 
shall be rendered easy of comprehension hereafter. Thus we are 
taught to look upwards and forwards ; to cease from man whose 
breath is in his nostrils, and to make the Lord only our confidence; 
and to do finally with our might what our hands find to do, know- 
ing that the night cometh certainly, and that it ma}^ come very 
soon, when no man can work." 



CHAPTER XVII 

DR. NEVIN with others took a comprehensive view of the 
objects to be reached in the Centennial Celebration. He 
thought that the Reformed Church should be studied, not only in 
its history during the preceding century, but by right back to its 
origin in Switzerland and Germany. It was only in this way that, 
as a branch of the body of Christ, it could come to a proper feel- 
ing of self-consciousness, and be fully qualified to act its appropri- 
ate part in the future histoiy of this country. Accordingly, he 
commenced a series of articles in the Weekly Messenger under the 
general caption of the Heidelberg Catechism, which, with some in- 
terruptions from time to time, extended over a period of nearly 
two years, from December, 1840, to August, 1842. In all there were 
twenty-nine numbers or chapters. They constituted a brief but 
comprehensive history of the Reformed Church, including that of 
the Catechism, from her beginning in Switzerland, her progress in 
Germany and Holland, and then during her Centennial period in 
this country. Properly speaking she could not have her origin 
either in one or another of these countries. Whilst the Reforma- 
tion may be regarded as an entirely new life in the histoiy of Chris- 
tianity, it stood in the closest vital connection with the same his- 
tory as it unfolded itself century after century from the time, of 
the Apostles. In the beginning, it was one and the same move- 
ment towards a higher, a freer and more evangelical Church ; but it 
included in it two different ground tendencies, which, with a con- 
scious underlying sense of oneness, nevertheless parted at the 
very outset, coming into full opposition, and in the end resolved 
themselves into two distinct communions or confessions. The one 
gathered around Martin Luther and Wittenberg ; the other came 
to its expression first in the free atmosphere of Switzerland ; but 
the outburst of the same great movement in different lands was so 
nearly simultaneous in France, England, Scotland, Holland and 
Germany, that it would be unhistorical to claim for it any merely 
national rise. 

A considerable number of the articles, nominally on the Cate- 
chism, consists of vivid sketches of the colossal figures of the great 
Reformers on the Reformed side, each in connection with his own 
particular work. Eirst and foremost stands Ulric Zwingii, who 

(145) 



146 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1S44 [DlV. Till 

set Switzerland on fire with his fervid, burning eloquence, and his 
zeal for the Word of the Lord. He was carried from the field of 
battle, probably before he had arrived at the maturity of his strength 
or wisdom. On this account his view of the Lord's Supper came 
to be identified subsequently with a rationalistic doctrine called 
after his name, but which was derived from a different source. On 
this point Dr. Xevin did not do full justice to Zwingli at the time, 
representing him as not having a proper sense of the mystery of 
the Saviour's presence in the Eucharist. In subsequent years; 
after a more thorough examination of the subject, he corrected this 
impression, which he had received from old books, and, with Dr. 
Ebrard, he on good grounds rescued the memory of Zwingli from 
the rationalistic tendency with which it had become identified. In 
other respects, through a number of long essays, in masterly style, 
he describes Zwingli, the Swiss hero of faith, as rising far above 
the men of his da}', much as his native mountains shoot up be}'ond 
the surrounding plains of Europe. Comparing him with Luther 
he says : 

"We ma}' allow that Luther, historically considered, forms a more 
important link than Zwingli, in the complicated chain-work of the 
Reformation. We may allow that as an organ he embodied more 
fulh' than the other the idea which it was the effort of the age to 
embody in this great revolution. The living spirit of the Reforma- 
tion individualized itself in his person under its most vital and 
characteristic form. But we are by no means authorized to refer it 
as a whole to his authority and example. On the contraiy, mighty 
forces wrought for the production of this revolution, which stood 
in uo connection with his person. The Reformation in Switzerland 
in its origin was independent of the Reformation in Saxony, and in 
a certain sense anticipated it in point of time. 

" Nothing can be clearer than the fact, that Zwingli was brought 
sooner than Luther to perceive the rottenness of the papacy as a 
system, and to feel the necessit}' of a reformation, that should 
shake it to the centre. As early as 1516 at least, his testimony 
against the gross abominations of popeiy and the errors of the age 
was uttered at Einsiedlen, loud and clear, when as yet all was com- 
paratively quiet at Wittenberg. The idea of a general Reforma- 
tion had fixed itself early in his thoughts and desires ; and the 
consciousness of being himself called ot God to labor for this ob- 
ject wrought, as it would seem, strongly and steadily in his soul. 
Instead of following, Zurich went before Wittenberg. 

" Luther, indeed, was one of the last men to act with plan or 



Chap. XYII] the heidelberg catechism 14*7 

foresight in such a case. The Reformation with him was anything 
but a matter of calculation or sj^stematic arrangement. In the 
symplicity of his heart, he involved himself in a quarrel with 
Rome, without dreaming of the consequences to which it would 
lead. He* was the unconscious organ of a spirit, the depth of 
which he had himself no power to fathom, and herein precisely lies 
his highest qualifications for the work to which he was called. 
With more insight into his own position there would have been 
less authority. From the beginning Zwingli more fully understood 
the meaning of the work in which he was engaged. This may 
have been owing to the fact that the ground of his spiritual activity 
was not of the deepest kind. But be that as it may, the result 
was calculation and method, and business-like action from the first, 
which caused the Reformation in Switzerland, all along, to be a 
separate and independent work, far more than the consequence in 
any sense of the changes which were taking place in the North." 
In these sketches, as a matter of course, Luther could not occupy 
much space or appear in prominent outline on the Reformed side 
of the Reformation, but every now and then we catch glimpses of 
his truly heroic character. He did not approve of the policy of hold- 
ing the Conference at Marburg, went to it reluctantly, onl} T at the 
urgent entreat}^ of the Landgrave, Philip of Hessia, and when he 
made his appearance there he did not, in all respects, appear to ad- 
vantage. He probably thought so himself when he took sick at 
night on his way back to Saxony. Some indication of a feeling of 
this kind showed itself after he got home to his dear wife, Katrina, 
when he hurled back his Parthian arrow at the Swiss Reformers. 
" The Sacramentarians, 1 ' he says when he stood once more on his own 
soil at Wittenberg, " boast of having beaten me at Marburg, which 
is after their fashion. For they are not only liars, but deceit and 
falsehood itself, as both Carlstadt and Zwingli have shown in deeds 
as well as words." Zwingli hy the side of his wife, Anna, perhaps 
smiled, but in his devotions wept. Apart from the conciliatory ar- 
ticles drawn up at the close of the Conference, showing that the 
Reformers agreed on all points except one, the Reformed appeared 
to the best advantage to outsiders or lookers on, and they probably 
went home with the better conscience. But it would be doing 
Luther and the cause of truth great injustice to suppose that he ex- 
hibited only a certain native clogged stubbornness on this great oc- 
casion. He believed that he had a momentous truth to support, in 
which he was right, just as Zwingli and his friends firmly believed 
they were right from their stand-point. Both sides adhered too 



148 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

closed to the letter of Scripture. The time for an inward recon- 
ciliation of their differences had not yet arrived. The age must 
first advance in culture, and the Reformers or their disciples must 
first come to a deeper comprehension of the Gospel itself. Luther, 
however, notwithstanding appearances, was truly great at Marburg, 
and this Dr. Nevin, even at this early period, did not fail to see. 

"Whatever we may think," he writes, " of the false position in 
which Luther stood, when he could make so much of the difference 
between his opponents and himself in this case, exaggerating the 
point in debate beyond all reason, at the expense of all charity and 
peace; still, it must be admitted, that under another aspect, it ex- 
hibits his character, in a point of view, which is truly sublime. 
What a triumph of principle, (for in Luther it was principle) , over 
against all the whisperings of .expediency ! Not even to save the 
Reformation, when Pope and Emperor are binding themselves to- 
gether for its overthrow, will he budge one inch from his place, at 
the expense of conscience. His faith in God is to him more than 
the whole world besides. Let prince entreat or scold, he heeds it 
not. The friendship of the Landgrave has for him no weight. 
Even the tears of Zwingli cannot make him move." 

Sometimes in unhappy controversies in the Church, a layman, 
like a certain woman in Jewish history, with her piece of mill-stone, 
looms up and shows more wisdom as well as a better appreciation 
of the necessities of the occasion than the clerg} T themselves. So 
it was with Philip of Hessia, a prince and a statesman. He was 
filled with the deepest anxiety for the ark of the Lord as well as 
for the peace of the countiy, and he did what he could to promote 
the unit}^ of the Church in the Fatherland, in his day and genera- 
tion. His well-meant effort in this direction was only partially 
successful at Marburg ; but it was a step in advance, which was 
followed three centuries afterwards with better success. 

"It seemed to him that there was no good reason for so much 
heat, between those who had split on this dark question only, 
whilst in all other respects their views of truth were essentially 
the same. His own large and noble spirit carried him high above 
the prejudices with which he was surrounded, and to his clear vision, 
at the same time, the melancholy consequences to which the strife 
might be expected to lead, stood clearly revealed from the begin- 
ning. Evangelical, not Lutheran, the latter a designation first used 
in the way of reproach b}- the enemies of the Reformation, was 
the title by which Philip wished the entire Protestant communion 
to be distinguished. In view of t.he imminent danger to which the 



Chap. XYII] the heidelberg catechism 149 

whole interest was now coming to be exposed, he felt that almost 
eveiything depended on a reconciliation of the parties, whom this 
controversy had put so far asunder, and whom it now seemed to be 
driving still further from one another, the longer it lasted. For 
never had it been prosecuted with so great bitterness and violence 
as just at this time, when the external relations of the Church were 
calling so loudly for harmony and peace. It occurred to Philip, 
therefore, that the only hope of ending the contest would be in 
bringing the leaders of both parties together in the way of an 
amicable conference. The design was great and noble, inasmuch 
as it contemplated a work of peace and love, on so large a scale, 
in the face of so many difficulties, and in the midst of conditions 
so critical for the honor of religion, and the safety of the entire 
Protestant cause. At the same time, however, it was full of hazard." 

The series of articles, which we have been here considering, con- 
tain also interesting sketches of Leo, Bullinger, Farel and Calvin, 
in their historical work, followed by a succinct history of the for- 
mation of the Heidelberg Catechism in the Palatinate hy Freder- 
ick, the Pious, in 1563, its spread and influence in Germany, Hol- 
land and other countries of Europe as well as in this country. As 
a matter of right the colossal figure of Calvin rises in the as- 
scendant after the death of Zwingli, and his influence is every- 
where felt in Reformed countries. The articles on the Sacrament- 
arian controversy are of much value. Under its first form this 
controversj^ had in a measure passed away, but in Calvin's time it 
broke out with new violence, yet with better results. Calvin had 
signed the Augsburg confession as explained by its author, and 
his view advancing be}^ond that of Zwingli did not differ essenti- 
ally from that of Melanchthon himself. At this early day Dr. Nevin 
fully endorsed it ex animo, which showed that he had brought it 
with him from the Presbyterian Church, where it had become, in a 
great measure, obsolete. 

The articles on the Catechism, appearing during a long festal 
period in the Church, produced the most happy impression. Other 
correspondents began to write for the Messenger on kindred sub- 
jects. Inferior catechisms, which had come to occupy the place of 
the Heidelberg, in the instruction of the youth in the congregations, 
were set aside, and this venerable symbol was invested with an au- 
thority and respect among ministers and laity in the German 
Church which it had never enjoyed before. During all this time 
Dr. Nevin was himself a learner no less than a teacher of others. 
After the death of Dr. Rauch it devolved on him to preach almost 



150 AT MERCERSBURO FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

exclusively in the College Chapel on Sunday morning, and for the 
sake of system as well as for other reasons, he adopted it as a rule 
to base his discourses on one or more questions in the Catechism 
until he had fairly gone over the entire ground. It was in this way 
he mastered this form of sound words in its historical relations 
and bearings, as well as in regard to its contents and inner substance. 
The particular benefit to himself consisted in his finding out what 
was the genius or inner spirit of the Church in whose service he 
was called to labor, which qualified him to be a laborer that needed 
not to be ashamed. The old Puritan Life, in which he had been 
educated, began to recede in proportion as he penetrated the life 
of the German Reformation. 

These essays on the Heidelberg Catechism, longer than most long 
newspaper articles, but full of substantial food, were the first to be 
looked for each week, and the first to be read. Thus they added 
very much to the interest and value of the paper. When they were 
finished they were repeatedly called for in book-form, and in re- 
sponse to this request. Dr. Xevin in 1847 published his "History 
and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism," pp. 162. a brief but a 
most valuable work — multum in parvo. It is sometimes supposed 
that this volume is simply the republication of the essays, but this 
is a mistake. The former contains a large amount of valuable mat- 
ter which is not in the latter, and the same remark is true, vice 
versa. The book opens with the formation of the Catechism in the 
Palatinate, Germany, in the year 1563. and then follows its history 
through its various channels down to its appearance in this country. 
The articles in the Messenger contained much A'aluable historical 
matter pertaining to the Reformation, not found in the book which 
grew out of them. It would have been well if the two could have 
been combined, so as to form a larger and more comprehensive 
volume, and this might yet be done with profit. 

In the latter part of the volume, the author, after much faithful 
study and reflection, and with much' vigor and originality, all his own, 
proceeds to describe the theology of the Catechism, its (ecumeni- 
cal character, its objectivity, its practical spirit, its freedom from 
relagianism.its reserve in regard to high Calvinism on the subject 
of the decrees, and its ideas of the sacraments and good works. 
It was a Calvinistic book, Olevianus, a disciple of Calvin, being one 
of its authors, more particularly as it regards the Lord's Supper, 
the great question of the age ; but it significantly passed over the 
subject of the decrees, holding fast to the doctrine of divine graec, 
which underlies the metaphysical theory of predestination. In 



Chap. XVII] the heidelberg catechism 151 

this respect the symbol showed no special leaning towards Calvin- 
ism on the one hand, just as it avoided the one-sidedness of Ar- 
minianism on the other. This irenical characteristic it received 
from the German soil oat of which it grew through the influence of 
Melanchthon, and we may say from the aversion of German Chris- 
tianity to the one-sidedness of the great dogma, which subsequently 
became more characteristic of Calvinism than its view of the 
Eucharist, from which it originally started out. 

Having settled in this general way the theolog}' of the Cate- 
chism, the writer in the last chapter of the book proceeds to give a 
sketch of the genius wmich pervades its teachings and becomes con- 
crete in the religious life of the churches, that cling to it as their 
banner, amidst the contact of the ages. As the Reformation 
formed no absolute rupture with the true Christian life which pre- 
ceded it, but was rather a legitimate continuation and growth of it 
under a higher and more spiritual form, the Church of the Heidel- 
berg Catechism, therefore, was not a plant of alien growth in Ger- 
many, transplanted from a foreign soil. The Protestant Church, as al- 
ready said, included in it from the beginning two diverging tenden- 
cies, closely related, yet necessarily variant, but not necessarily 
hostile, except when allowed to assert violently their exclusive 
claims. It was believed by many such broad and liberal men as 
Melanchthon, Calvin and others, that no rupture was required on 
this account. The orthodoxy of the Church, they supposed, might 
with safety make itself so wide as to embrace both forms of think- 
ing, in which expectation, however, to their great grief, they were 
doomed in the end to be disappointed. 

"No rebellion" says Dr. Nevin, "was intended against the Augs- 
burg Confession when the new Catechism appeared in the Palatinate. 
In the form in which it had been expounded and defined by Me- 
lanchthon, its author, all were willing to own its authority. The 
Heidelberg Catechism was designed to interpret rather than to 
contradict the Augsburg Confession, and to explain the sense in 
which it was held in the Palatinate. Frederick, the Third, had 
signed it in its unaltered forms at Naumburg, A. D., 1561, a short 
time before the Catechism appeared under his direction and foster- 
ing care, to which subscription we find him afterwards appealing as 
still valid in 1566, when called to account by the imperial Diet at 
Augsburg; and with such success, too, that his right to be recog- 
nized as a member politically of the Protestant confession was 
formally acknowledged by this august body. Ursinus, the principal 
author of the Catechism, moreover was a devoted disciple of Me- 



152 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844- [DlV. YIII 

lanchthon himself, the author of the Augsburg Confession, to which, 
in its Melanchthonian sense, he also stood sworn as a teacher in 
Breslau. How in such circumstances could the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism be anything else than simply German Calvinistic or Semi- 
Lutheran we ma} T say, in its theological constitution and spirit ! 
In the midst of all this close correspondence with German Lutheran- 
ism, the Palatinate Catechism has always been recognized as the 
general, distinctive, confessional formulary of the whole Reformed 
Church in German}^. A single fact which reflects great light on 
its true character and spirit. 

" The life which it embodies is the life of the Reformed Church 
in Germany in the period of the Reformation, where religion held 
a vigorous hold on the hearts of men as a divine fact, and before 
the rationalistic tendenc3 T , which attached itself to Protestantism, 
had become strong enough to make itself felt in the general faith. 
The Catechism is itself a strikingly impressive monument of the in- 
wardness and fulness that characterized the religious life at the 
time when it was formed. Whatever we may think of the theo- 
logical controversies with which the spirits of men were so actively 
inflamed on all sides, it is quite plain that the age was filled with 
the seriousness of a divine reality in the objects of its faith, such 
as we often miss in the exhibitions of later histoiy. The Catechism 
is 110 cold workmanship merely of the understanding. It is full of 
feeling and faith. The joyousness of a fresh, simple, childlike trust 
appears beautifully, touchingly interwoven with all its divinity. 
It is only here and there that we feel in its pages the presence of 
the war spirit with which its origin was on all sides surrounded. 
As a whole it is moderate, gentle and soft; an image we may sup- 
pose of the quiet though earnest soul of Ursinus himself. Its 
position is affirmative mainly in its teachings, rather than negative. 

" Such was the character of the Protestant faith generally in the 
sixteenth century. It did not stand in mere contradiction to the 
faith of Rome. It had large content of its own, an inward inde- 
pendent life, which it felt bound to assert ; and it was the assertion 
of this life only, which threw it necessarily into the attitude of 
protest against the errors of the ancient church. In all this, of 
course, there was no thought of breaking off all historical connec- 
tion with the life of the Church as it stood before. On the contrary, 
the sense of the objective, the historical, the catholic, and the al- 
ways enduring in the Church, as distinguished from the wayward- 
ness of mere private judgment and individual will, wrought power- 
fully on the whole theology of the age. The grand characteristic 



Chap. XVII] the heidelberg catechism 153 

of the period was its power to create, rather than its power to de- 
stroy, unlike the genius of the shallow war which is now too often 
waged against Rome, from the stand-point of mere rationalistic 
controversy and denial, which is strong in its affectation of pulling 
down, but impotent as water itself towards all purposes of build- 
ing up. The sixteenth century was not simply Protestant ; it was 
Catholic, Reformed Catholic, at the same time. So specially, we 
may say, it was in Germany, the cradle properly of the Reforma- 
tion life. In this Catholic Church Spirit, the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism largely participates. In no other Reformed symbol prob- 
ably are the great constituents of the true and proper character of 
this confession, liberty and reverence for authority, the sense of 
the individual and the sense of the general, more fairly and hap- 
pily combined. 

"A fine illustration of the catholic, historical feeling of the Cate- 
chism, is found in the fact that so large a part of its instructions are 
based upon the Apostles' Creed. In this, it is true, it does but 
show itself conformable to the general spirit of Protestanism, in 
the age in which it was produced. No catechism could be consid- 
ered complete, no confession sound, in the sixteenth century, with- 
out a formal recognition of this ancient groundwork of Christian 
doctrine. The case, we all know, has become lamentably so in our 
later times. 

'■' The church feeling of the Catechism appears again in the high 
account which it makes of the Sacraments ; here also in full har- 
mony with the general Protestant spirit of the sixteenth century, 
and in noticeable contrast with much at least of the Protestant 
spirit of the present day. The Sacraments are held to carry with 
them an objective force, although not, of course, as an opus oper- 
atum. Their constitution includes grace for all who are prepared 
to turn it to account. Thus Baptism is not only a symbol of the 
washing of regeneration, but a solemn authentification of the fact 
itself — the proper body of the inward soul — in all cases where the 
requisite conditions of its presence are at hand. So too the Lord's 
Supper is the actual bearer of a divine life; the mediatorial life of 
the Son of God, designated as His body and blood; with which he 
feeds our souls by the power of the Holy Ghost unto everlasting 
salvation (Qu. 75). It is not a token merely of our interest in the 
atonement of Christ, but serves actually to unite us more and 
more to his sacred body (Qu. 16), thus helping forward that great 
myster}^ by which we are to become fully like Him at last in the 
power of a common life." 
10 



154 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

Dr. Nevin in all his discussions respecting the Sacraments ad- 
hered strictly to the old church view of their true nature, which is 
also scriptural; that the}^ consist of two things, the outward and 
inward, the outward sign and the invisible grace. When so regard- 
ed there ought to be no difficulty in admitting their power and 
efficacy. Regarded simply and abstract^ as outward signs, as 
water, bread or wine, however appropriate such symbols may be, 
the} T are no sacraments at all, and can have at best nothing more 
than a moral and instructive efficacy. 

"In full harrnon}^" the author goes on to $&y, "with the Catholic 
and Sacramental character of the Catechism, as already represented, 
we fiud it to be churchly also in all its connections and associations ; 
and this to an extent indeed, which it is not easy for us now, in the 
Puritan atmosphere with which we are surrounded, fully to per- 
ceive and admit. Its proper historical relations in this view, 
particularly as they are presented to us in the German Church, are 
far enough removed from that character of spiritualistic baldness, in 
which too many imagine the perfection of Protestantism to consist 
at the present time. They include the altar, the organ, and the 
gown; the church lessons, and a church year, with its regular c} T cle 
of religious festivals; repetitions of the Lord's Prayer and the 
Creed; liturgical services; an entire order of worship in short, 
which to the nostrils of modern Puritanism, it is to be feared, would 
carry no small stench of poper}^ itself throughout. Think of the 
fact however, as we may, there it stands ; and we must let it go for 
what it is worth. It shows at least that the original and proper 
church life of the Heidelberg Catechism was something different 
from modern Puritanism ; and that Puritan associations and modes 
of thought are not exactly the sphere, in all probability, in which 
this life is likely to be either rightly understood or fully turned to 
account." 

As an illustration of the liturgical worship in the original Re- 
formed Churches of Germany, an account is given of the old Lit- 
urgy of the Palatinate, published in the same year as the Cate- 
•chism, in 1563, with rubrics for the different services on the Lord's 
"Day, on Holy Days, week days, and chrys for humiliation and 
prayer, etc. The Preparatory Service was especially solemn. All 
persons intending to commune were required to come forward and 
take their place around the altar, where they were admonished to 
examine themselves and to repent of all their sins. Then with the 
pastor the}' ■were required to make confession of their repentance 
and faith aloud, after which the pastor pronounced a formal abso- 



Chap. XVII] the heidelberg catechism 155 

lution or declaration of pardon upon all who were truly penitent, 
with the judgment of God against all such as remained impenitent 
and unbelieving. The Liturgy was literally adhered to in the Re- 
formed churches in Germany until rationalism came in and under- 
mined Catechism and Agenda, with many other things that were 
valuable and precious in the old church life. When Dr. Nevin thus 
referred to this liturgy he could learn of only one copy in exist- 
ence at the time in this country, and he doubtless regarded it as a 
valuable discovery when it came to him, raked up for him out of 
the debris of the past. Various reflections passed through his 
mind which he put on record during his investigations. 

"One thing is certain," he writes, "the German Church is not 
Puritan; and there is no good reason wiry it should now succumb 
to Puritan forms or Puritan modes of thought, from whatever quar- 
ter they imvv be presented. She had a life of her own, once at least, 
which it is still important that she should understand and cherish 
with becoming self-respect, if, indeed, she have any vocation to fill 
at all as a separate independent church. Not that Puritanism is to 
be blindl} 7 hated and opposed. We owe it much, which we are 
bound to acknowledge with gratitude and affection. Nor yet either 
that we should fall back blindly to the past as it lies behind us in 
our own histor3 T . All sudden outward reforms of this sort, that 
rest upon no interior necessity in the life of the Church itself, are to 
be deprecated as likely to do more harm than good. But it is much 
that we should be able to understand and honor the worth that ac- 
tually belongs t.o our own life, so as to cherish it and turn it to ac- 
count accordingly ; that we should not suffer ourselves to be over- 
whelmed by foreign influences, but be watchful rather to strengthen 
the things that remain, and go forward if not in the very track, yet 
still in the general spirit and genius at least of those good old paths, 
in which our ecclesiastical fathers delighted to walk in the age of 
the Reformation. 

The Lutheran and Reformed Churches in this country from the 
beginning stood in close and intimate relations ; to a large extent 
worshipped together in union churches ; and after the union of the 
two bodies in Germany made several ineffectual attempts to form 
a union here also. Whatever movements, therefore, of interest took 
place in the one made a reciprocal impression in the other, and gen- 
erally with beneficial results. The churchly position assumed by 
Dr. Nevin at Mercersburg at once arrested attention, and met with 
a friendly response from the conservative portions of the Lutheran 
denomination generally The editor of the Lutheran Standard pub- 



156 AT MERCERSBURG ER0M 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

lishecl at Columbus, Ohio, ou noticing Dr. Nevin's History and 
Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism, when it made its appearance 
in 184T, made the following among other remarks: 

" Sound views and a proper church spirit pervade this interest- 
ing volume, and its influence must be most salutary upon the Ger- 
man Reformed Church. Whatever inay be said against its distin- 
guished author, from a certain direction, we cheerfully confess, we 
S3 r mpathize with him to a far greater extent,, in reference to the sys- 
tem of the Catechism and the Sacraments, than with his opponents, 
even though they be found in our own Church. Our own sister 
Church has great cause to be thankful for having obtained the valu- 
able, distinguished services of their eminent Professors, Drs. Xevin 
and Schaff. The happy influence of their labors upon her whole 
communion has alread}^ manifested itself in various ways. Nor can 
it be denied that this influence has also been largehy felt in various 
parts of our own Church." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

AS we have seen, Dr. Nevin was conscious of a dualism in his re- 
-£j- ligious experiences from the time he left Union College in 
1821, which continued to harass him more or less at Princeton, and 
for awhile afterwards also at Allegheny. The old Reformed faith 
or conception of religion gradually grew stronger over against the 
Puritan or Methodistic tendency of the day ; but it had not fully 
asserted itself when he left Pittsburgh in 1840. That was brought 
about at Mercersburg more fully in the years 1842-1843 in a very 
practical way in the discharge of his official duties. The new order 
of religious life brought in by the system of revivals had very little 
respect for history, and was very imperious in its demands ; not 
always content to live in peace with the old order, but quite deter- 
mined at times to ignore it altogether, if not to tear it up by the 
roots, whenever that was possible. So it met Dr. Nevin before he 
scarcely had time to begin his work at Mercersburg. For its te- 
merity he gave it a stern rebuff, and no longer disposed to compro- 
mise, he defined his position, from which he never afterwards 
swerved. It came to pass on this wise. 

The Reformed congregation in the village was accustomed to 
worship in a wretched old church building ; had to be supplied 
with preaching by neighboring pastors ; and at length it came to 
depend altogether on Dr. Nevin and the professors for its supply 
of spiritual food. This condition of things appeared to detract 
from the credit of the Institution in the minds of students as well 
as of strangers, and Dr. Nevin began to interest himself in bring- 
ing about a different state of affairs, one that would be more in 
keeping with the location of the College and Seminary of the 
Church. As a first step in advance, he urged the brethren to secure 
a pastor who should come and live among the people. A number 
of candidates, accordingly, appeared and preached acceptably, but 
no one seemed to arouse sufficient interest to secure a cordial or 
sufficient financial support. 

At length the Rev. William Ramsey, of Philadelphia, a returned 
missionary from China, and at the time doing the work of an evan- 
gelist in his own wa}^ in different parts of the country, came to 
Mercersburg towards the close of the year 1842, as a candidate for 
the vacant congregation. Dr. Nevin had known him as a student 

(157) 



158 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

at Princeton Seminaiy, and had recommended him to the Consist- 
ory, no donbt still somewhat in his dualistic state of mind, under 
some kind of an impression that the dull people needed some re- 
vivalistic fire to bring them up to the full measure of duty and 
responsibility. Mr. Ramsey made a favorable impression, preached 
impressive sermons, and it was not long before he felt that he was 
master of the situation ; and as he thought he already had matters 
prettj 7 " much his own way, he became more and more emotional. 
On Sunday evening, without consulting any one, in particular, ap- 
parently on the spur of the moment, with a densely crowded house 
before him, he brought out the "Anxious Bench," and invited all 
who desired the prayers of the Church to present themselves before 
the altar. A number of persons, and amongst others several el- 
derly ladies, who had always adorned their Christian profession, 
obe}^ed the summons, and the result was what usually takes place 
on such occasions, an intense excitement and more or less confu- 
sion. The preacher was evidently now in his element and showed 
that he knew how to manage a modern revival or religious excite- 
ment. Dr. Nevin, on the other hand, sat back in the pulpit, some- 
what amazed at the sudden change that seemed to have taken place 
in this sober old congregation, with a flushed countenance, but 
quietly contemplating the scene below him. It helped to furnish 
him with suitable phrases when afterwards he graphically described 
similar but still wilder scenes in his Tract on the Anxious Bench, 
to which this served as an introduction. 

" Excitement," he says, " rules the hour. No room is found either 
for instruction or reflection. A sea of feeling, blind and tempest- 
uous, rolls in on all sides. — The anxious then are encouraged to 
weep aloud, cry out and wring their hands. Now the} T are enveloped 
in the loud tones of some stimulating spiritual song. Then there 
is prayer, which soon becomes as loud, commencing, perhaps, with 
a single voice, but flowing quickly into a sea of tumult uating 
sounds, from which no sense can be extracted even by the keenest 
ear. The mourners besiege the altar, pell-mell, kneeling, or it may 
be floundering flat upon the floor, and all joining in the general 
noise. Then may be heard the voice of the preacher, shouting 
some commonplace word of exhortation, which no body hears or 
regards ; while at different points, vague, crude expostulations and 
directions are poured into the ears of the struggling suppliants by 
'brethren,' now suddenly transformed into spiritual counsellors, 
who might be at a loss themselves, at any other time, to explain a 
single point in religion. In due time, one after another is brought 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 159 

through ; and thus new forms of disorder, shouting, clapping and 
so on, are brought into play. In this way, the interest of the oc- 
casion, such as it is, may be kept up till a late hour. But who will 
pretend to say, that instruction has been regarded or intended, as 
a leading part of the process." The writer had confronted scenes 
like these in his previous experience, and now one of them con- 
fronted him in his own church. In this instance he was supplied 
with food for reflection, and a motive for some necessary form of 
future action. 

After the meeting had in a measure run its course, Dr. Nevin, 
who had apparently been overlooked up to this time, was called on 
to say something, which he did in his usual thoughtful and solemn 
way. Speaking of the nature of true religion, he told his hearers 
not to imagine that coming to the altar in this public way was the 
same as penitence and faith in Christ, which alone could give peace 
and rest to the soul. He pointed out the distinction that should 
be made between the two things, and warned them earnestly 
against all self-deception. He assured them that no amount of 
bodily exercise would profit them aught, not even if they should 
creep about from one corner of the church to the other until their 
knees were sore and bleeding. The remarks were proper, and very 
judicious at this stage of the proceedings, although they changed 
the tone of the meeting considerably — very much for the better — 
and the 'people went home with a sense of the solemnity of religion ; 
but Mr. Ramse}^, as he afterwards remarked, did not think they were 
altogether suitable to the occasion. 

The people, however, were aroused, and proceeded immediately 
to elect him as their pastor, for the reason, among others, that they 
could raise more money for his support than for that of any one 
else. Dr. Nevin, even up to this point, was rather in favor of the 
choice when he saw the new interest awakened in the drowsy old 
congregation ; but he occupied a responsible position in the Church, 
and thought there ought to be a distinct understanding before the 
matter in hand should proceed any further. He looked at the bear- 
ings of this new movement on the Institutions at Mercersburg, and 
the impression it was likely to make on the Church at large. Ac- 
cordingly, he wrote a letter to his friend Mr. Ramsey, after he had 
left, informing him that he was anxious he should accept the call 
tendered him, but candidly telling him that it would be necessary, 
if he came to Mercersburg, to dispense with his new measures and 
adopt the catechetical system in vogue in the Reformed Church, 
else he could not work together harmoniously with him, and he 



160 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

would be obliged to stand in his way. This brought on a crisis, 
and the pastor-elect misapprehending the letter, or not seeing the 
relation of things out of which it sprung, at once wrote to the Con- 
sistory, declining the call, and assigning Dr. Kevin's letter as the 
reason for his non-acceptance. It was by far one of the longest 
letters that we have ever read, a diatribe as pungent as the writer 
could make it, in which he belabors his old friend and fellow student 
at Princeton without gloves, as he no doubt supposed. It had in 
it the appearance of a large amount of sanctimonious piety, but it 
also contained a considerable amount of bitterness ; and was evi- 
dently intended to produce an effect. The mistake which the good 
man made was that he did not allow himself to see that he was here 
dealing with an old historical Church and not with one of his own 
new school order. 

The letter was read by all who wished to see it, and some enjoyed 
it not a little, just as the}' would a voile}' of artillery thrown into 
the camp of an enemy. But most persons were sad about it. The 
high wrought expectations that the church would at once become 
the largest in the town under the leadership of such a minister from 
Philadelphia were dashed to the ground, and now what was to be 
done? Dr. Nevin instinctive^ comprehended the gravit} T of the 
situation. He had at length taken a decided stand in favor of the 
old Reformed faith, of which he had learned something in his youth, 
OA T er against that which he had brought with him from Union 
College. He had made up his mind that the former should rule the 
latter, and not the reverse. As usual he was pressed into position 
b}^ the force of circumstances, or to speak more reverently, by the 
guiding hand of Providence. The good people of the congregation 
gradually became reconciled to the loss of their idol, and not a few 
outsiders began to admire the Doctor's heroism and pluck in stand- 
ing up single-handed and alone against what seemed to them at the 
time a perfect tornado of feeling. 'Squire Cook, a thoughtful elder, 
remarked that as Dr. Xevin was at the head of the Church, he no 
doubt could see farther than the members, and that in the end all 
would come out right. His opinion prevailed, and the congrega- 
tion did not go to pieces as some had predicted. The Union Col- 
lege phrensy, however, had come down by this time into some of 
the staid churchly congregations in Pennsylvania, and a consider- 
able portion of the students at Mercersburg were more or less ad- 
dicted to it. Here it was a more serious matter than in the con- 
gregation, and Dr. Xevin saw at once that, for sanitary reasons at 
least, the atmosphere of the College and Seminary must be disin- 



Chap. XYIII] the anxious bench controversy 161 

fected without delay. As he was lecturing on Pastoral Theology 
at the time, he took occasion to deliver several lectures on the sys- 
tem of New Measures, to which the students had just received a 
full introduction. They were quite as outspoken as the letter to 
Mr. Ramsey, and a great deal more forcible. The effect was all 
that could be desired. The effervescence among the theologians, in 
particular, subsided, and the pious students generally came to 'Squire 
Cook's conclusion, already referred to, and were quite willing to 
hope for the best. 

But the Professor at once saw that vague rumors of the stand 
which he had here taken would soon get out into the Church, and 
that it was quite likely to be misunderstood or misrepresented. 
Accordingly he concluded to enlarge his lectures, and in the spring 
of 1843 published them in pamphlet form under the title, The 
Anxious Bench — A Tract for the Times. Pp. 149. Tekel. Daniel, 
5 : 21. As he said, it was due to the Church that he should define 
his position so that all concerned might know exactly where he 
stood; also to himself that he might know where he himself stood, 
and whether he would be sustained in his position, be free to con- 
tinue in his work, or whether it would not be better to retire from 
it before proceeding any further. — The small volume had at once 
an extensive circulation in both of the German Churches, and in a 
brief period of time a second edition was called for. 

The Tract for the Times was prepared with great care and cir- 
cumspection, so as not to be misunderstood or be capable of mis- 
construction. At the present day it is surprising that such ex- 
treme caution had to be exercised in order that the book might be 
understood and appreciated. It was simply a plea for religion, 
pure and undefiled, as opposed to a spurious religious experience, 
based on mere natural feeling, aroused during a period of religious 
excitement. It treated, however, of sacred things, and here more 
than an j where else, it became necessary to distinguish clearly be- 
tween what was a genuine and what was a spurious coin. The title 
itself was intended to prevent misconception of its contents : it 
was not named a treatise on New Measures, for many persons un- 
derstood by such measures the introduction into the churches of 
prayer meetings, Sunday-schools, protracted meetings, missionary 
work^ and other things of like character. Neither was the term 
employed merely to express a single thing with its foolish extrav- 
agances, but was made to stand as the type and representative of 
an. entire system of rel'gious activity, which, at the time, was tech- 
nically denominated the New Measure system of revivals, with 



162 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

which most readers were familiar. The particular here was put 
for the general, very properly, because it belonged to a system, not 
in name simply but in its life and spirit. 

The system did not belong to a genuine religious revival, but 
was rather its abuse. In the proper sense of the term the Church 
is continually seeking to be revived, is or ought to be revived every 
Sabbath, and if there are seasons when a special refreshing comers 
down from the Lord upon the congregation, so much the better ; 
but that is something vastly different from the system that gets up 
"the Anxious Bench, revival machinery, solemn tricks for the sake 
of effect, decision displays at the bidding of the preacher, genu- 
flections and prostrations in the aisle or around the altar, noise and 
disorder, extravagance and rant, mechanical conversions, justifica- 
tion by feeling rather than hy faith, and encouragement to all kinds 
of fanatical impressions." 

The Anxious Bench was written not as a diatribe against the 
Methodists, but more particularly for the defence and benefit of the 
German Churches, which were awaking from their spiritual slum- 
ber and passing through a crisis in their history. No field could 
be regarded as more interesting. A vast moral change was going 
forward upon it, involving consequences that no man could proper- 
ly calculate. From various causes a new feeling here was every- 
where at work on the subject of religion. As usual the old struggled 
to maintain itself in opposition to the new, and a strong tendency 
to become one-sided was created on both sides. The general mind 
unhappily had not been furnished thus far with proper protection 
and guidance in the wa}^ of full religious teaching, and the result 
was that in these critical circumstances, it had become exposed, more 
or less, at almost ever}- point, to those wild fanatical influences, 
which in this country are sure to come in like a desolating flood, 
wherever they can find room in order to gain possession of the en- 
tire field if possible, on the principle that the "old organizations 
are corrupt and ought to be destro^yed." In these circumstances, 
it was not always eas} T for the friends of earnest piety, in the regu- 
lar historical churches, to abide by the ancient landmarks of truth 
and order. The temptation was to fall in, at least to some extent, 
with the tide of fanaticism, as the only waj- of making war success- 
fully on the dead formality that stared them in the face in one di- 
rection, and the only wa}^ of counteracting the proselyting zeal of 
noisy sects in the other. 

" This and other considerations, 1 ' said Dr. Nevin in the first 
chapter of the Anxious Bench, " have had the effect of opening the 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 163 

way for the use of the New Measures to some extent in the German 
Reformed Church, but much more so in the Lutheran. It is well 
known that a large division of this last mentioned denomination 
has identified itself openly and zealously with the system both in 
doctrine and practice. The Lutheran Observer, which has a wide 
circulation and great influence, has lent all its authority to recom- 
mend and support the Anxious Bench with its accompaniments, 
taking every occasion to speak in its favor and making continually 
the most of its results. Thus ministers and people have been ex- 
tensively committed in its favor, so that with many the use of the 
Anxious Bench, and a zeal for evangelical godliness, are considered 
to be very much the same thing. It might seem, indeed, as though 
all the interests of religion, in the case of the German community, 
were to the view of a large class suspended on the triumphant prog- 
ress of the new system. With them it is emphatically the great 
power of God, which may be expected to turn and overturn until 
old things shall fairly pass away and all things shall become new. 

"And it must be acknowledged that the system bids fair at present 
to go on conquering and to conquer, in its own style, within the 
limits at least of this widely extended and venerable denomination. 
It seems to bear down, more and more, all opposition. It has be- 
come an interest too strong to be resisted or controlled. What are 
to be its ultimate issues and results, time only can reveal. — 'And 
let me tell you, sir,' writes a correspondent in the Lutheran Ob- 
server, Nov. 17, 1843, 'whatever Professor Nevin may have written, 
in the abstraction of his study, I am nevertheless strongly con- 
vinced, as a pastor, that the so-called Anxious Bench is the lever 
of Archimedes, which, by the blessing of God, can raise our Ger- 
man Churches to that degree of respectability in the religious 
world which they ought to enjoy. — 'And again, 'such measures are 
usuall}^ inseparable from great revivals, and if the great luminaries 
in the Church set themselves up against them they must be content 
to abide the consequences. By the judicious use of such measures 
the millenium must be accelerated and introduced.' 

"No one," says Dr. Nevin, "reflecting, therefore, on the actual 
state of things at this time in the field occupied by the German 
churches, can fail to perceive that there is full occasion for calling 
attention to the subject which it is here proposed to consider. An 
inquiry into the merits of the Anxious Bench, and the system to 
which it belongs, is not only reasonable and fit in the circumstances 
but loudly called for on every side. It is no small question that is 
involved in the case. The bearing of it upon the interests of re- 



164 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

ligion in the German churches is of fundamental and vital import- 
ance. A crisis has evidently been reached in their history, and 
one of the most serious points involved in it is precisely the ques- 
tion of New Measures. Let this system prevail and rule with per- 
manent sway, and the result of the religious movement, which is 
now in progress, will be something widely different from what it 
would have been under other auspices. The old regular organiza- 
tions, if the3 T continue to exist at all, will not be the same churches. 
In time to come their entire history and complexion will be shaped 
by the course of things with regard to this point. Under this view, 
therefore, the march of New Measures at the present time may well 
challenge our anxious and solemn regard. It is an interest of no 
common magnitude, portentous in its aspects and pregnant with 
consequences of vast account. The sj^stem is moving forward in 
full strength, and putting forth its pretensions in the boldest style 
on all sides. Surely we have a right, and in such a case we may 
feel it a duty, to institute an examination into its merits. 

" We may indeed congratulate ourselves that we have suffered as 
yet comparatively so little from fanatical excesses in our own de- 
nomination. Still, linked together as the German Churches are 
throughout the land, we have reason to be jealous here of influ- 
ences, that must in the nature of the case act upon us from with- 
out. In such circumstances there is occasion, and, at the same 
time, room for consideration. It might answer little purpose to 
interpose remonstrance or inquiry, if the rage for New Measures 
were fairly let loose as a sweeping wind within our borders. It 
were idle to bespeak attention from the rolling whirlwind. But 
with the whirlwind in full view, we may be exhorted reasonably to 
consider and stand, back from its destructive path. We are still 
free to reject or embrace the new order of things, as the interests 
of the Church, on calm reflection, may be found to require. In 
circumstances precisely such as these, it may be counted in all re- 
spects proper to subject the system to a serious examination. 

" It is sometimes imagined that no room must be allowed for 
criticism, where the object proposed is to rescue souls from hell. 
To stand upon points of order, in such a case, is to clog the chariot 
^wheels of salvation. Meanwhile the disastrous consequences of 
false excitement in the name of religion are entirely overlooked. 
No account is made, comparatively, of the danger of bringing both 
the truth and the power of God into discredit, Iry countenancing 
pretensions to the name of a revival, where the thing itself is not 
present. The clanger itself is by no means imaginary. Spurious 



Chap. XYIII] the anxious bench controversy 165 

excitements are natural and common. Gross irregularity and ex- 
travagance are actually at work, in connection with such excite- 
ments, on all sides. The whole interest of revivals is endangered 
by the assumption impudently put forward, that these revolting, 
excesses belong to the system. False and ruinous views of relig- 
ion are widely disseminated. Thousands of souls are thus de- 
ceived, and vast obstructions thrown in the way of true godliness. 
But of all this no account is made by those who are so sensitively 
jealous of danger on the other side. The only alternative they 
seem to see is Action or No Action, But the difference between 
right action and wrong action, we would think, is full as import- 
ant, to say the least, as the difference between action and no action — 
no matter what irregularities are attached to it, so long as it stands 
before us in the holy garb of a revival, it is counted unsafe to call 
it to account. The maxim, Prove all things, must be discarded, as 
well as the caution, Believe not every spirit. Most certainly in 
such circumstances caution does become us all. We should trem- 
ble to touch the Ark of God with unhallowed hands ; but it were 
to be wished, that this might be seriously laid to heart by the 
champions of the Anxious Bench themselves, as well as by others. 

"The fact that a crisis is come in the history of the German 
Churches, and that they are awaking to the consciousness of a 
new life with regard to religion, only makes it the more important 
that this subject should not be suffered to rest in vague confusion. 
It is a popish maxim, by which ignorance is made to be the mother 
of devotion. We say rather, Let there be light. The cause of 
the Reformation was more endangered by its own caricature than 
by all the opposition of Rome. Luther saved it, not by truckling 
compromise, but by boldly facing and unmasking the false spirit, 
so that all the world might see that Lutheran Christianity was one 
thing and wild Phrygian Montanism, with its pretended inspira- 
tion, another. Let things that are wrong be called by their right 
names and be separated from the things that are right." 

After having made what were supposed to be all the necessary 
introductory and explanatory remarks, the author of the Tract for 
the Times goes on in some four or five chapters to examine and re- 
fute the claims of the Anxious Bench system in crisp language and 
vigorous logic. He shows that its popularity or its seeming sucA 
cess does not give it any valid authority; that it requires no spir- 
itual power to give it effect ; that its reliance on forms or measures ] 
betrays inward weakness as well as the spirit of quackery; that it / 
is only a substitute for true strength ; that where held in honor it" 



166 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

gives ample space for novices and quacks; that it creates a false is- 
sue for the conscience ; unsettles true seriousness ; usurps the place 
of the cross; leads to disorder; connects itself with a vulgar and 
irreverent style of religion; is unfavorable to deep, earnest piet} T ; 
and that it results in wide-spread lasting spiritual mischief. What 
is said in its favor — that it brings the sinner to a decision, that it 
involves a committal, strengthens his purpose, gives him a peniten- 
tial discipline, opens the way for instruction or prayer — have very 
little force, as these desirable results can be reached in a better and 
more orderly vr&y. The Romish Church has alwa} T s delighted in 
arrangements and services animated by the same false spirit. In 
her penitential sj'stem all pains have been taken to produce effects 
by means of outward postures and dress, till in the end, amid the 
solemn mummery, no room has been left for genuine penitence at 
all. Yet not a single ceremoirv was ever introduced into its system 
that did not seem to be recommended by some sound religious 
reason at the time. 

" Simeon, the Stylite, distinguished himself in the fifth century 
by taking his station on the top of a pillar, for the gloiy of God and 
the benefit of his own soul. This whimsical discipline he continued 
to observe for forty-seven years. Meanwhile he became an object of 
wide-spread veneration. Tast crowds came from a distance to gaze 
upon him and hear him preach. The measure took with the people 
wonderfully. Thousands of heathen were converted and baptized 
by his hand. Among these, it may be charitably trusted, there 
were some whose conversion was inward and solid. God may have 
made use of Simeon's pillar — sixty feet high — to bring them to 
Himself. The seal of His approbation might, therefore, seem to 
have rested upon it to an extraordinary extent. Xo wonder the 
device became popular. The quackery of the Pillar took possession 
of the Eastern world and stood for a century, a monument of the 
folly that gave it birth. We laugh at it now; and yet it seemed a 
good thing in its time, and carried a weight of popularity with it, 
such as no new measure can boast of in our day. Monkery was to 
man}' , in fact, the means of conversion and salvation ;. and to this day 
an argument might be framed in its favor, under this view, no less 
plausible, to say the least, than any that can be presented for the 
use of the Anxious Bench. 

" Bat is not Methodism Christianity? And is it not better that 
the German Churches should rise in this form, than not rise at all ? 
Most certainly so, I reply, if that be its only alternative. But 
that is not the alternative. Their resurrection may just as well 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 167 

take place in the type of their own true, original, glorious life, as 
it is still to be found enshrined in their symbolical books. And, 
whatever there may be that is good in Methodism, this life of the 
Reformation I affirm to be immeasurably more excellent and sound. 
Wesley was a small man as compared with Melanchthon. Olshau- 
sen, with all his mysticism, is a commentator of the inmost sanc- 
tuary in comparison with Adam Clark. If the original distinctive 
life of the Churches of the Reformation be not the object to be 
reached after, in the efforts that are made to build up the interests 
of German Christian^ in this country, then it were better to say 
so openly and plainly. Why keep up the walls of denominational 
partition in such a case, with no distinctive spiritual being to up- 
hold or protect. A sect without a soul has no right to live. Zeal 
for a separate denominational name that utters no separate idea is 
the very essence of sectarian bigotry and schism. It could not 
well be otherwise." This new system addressed mainly the lower 
nature of man, or what the Scripture calls the psychic or natural 
man, in distinction from the pneumatic or spiritual part of his be- 
ing. The former, largely animal in character, was intended by the 
Creator to be for the most part the medium of his intercourse with 
the world of nature ; the latter to bring him into communion with 
God and divine things. 

"Error and heresy, I repeat it," says Dr. Nevin, referring to 
this psychic religion, "are involved in the system itself, and can- 
not fail, sooner or later, where it is encouraged, to evolve themselves 
in most disastrous results. A low Pelagianizing theory of religion 
runs through it from beginning to end. The fact of sin is ac- 
knowledged, but not in its true extent. The idea of a new spiritual 
creation is admitted, but not in its proper radical and comprehen- 
sive form. The ground of the sinner's salvation is made to be at 
last in his own separate person. The deep import of the declara- 
tion, ' That which is born of the flesh is flesh,' is not fully appre- 
hended ; and it is vainly imagined accordingly, that the flesh as 
such may be so stimulated and exalted notwithstanding, as to 
prove the mother of that spiritual nature, which we are solemnly 
assured can be born only of the Spirit. Hence all stress is laid 
upon the energy of the individual will, the self-will of the flesh, for 
the accomplishment of the great change in which regeneration is 
supposed to exist. 

"The case is not remedied at all lry the consideration, that due 
account is made at the same time professedly of God's Spirit, as 
indispensable in the work of conversion. The heresy lies involved 



168 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

in the system. This is so constructed as naturally and in due 
course of time inevitably to engender false views of religion. 
Sometimes the mere purpose to serve God, in the same form with a 
resolution to sign a temperance pledge, is considered to be the 
ground of regeneration. At other times it is made to stand in a 
certain state of feeling, supposed to be of supernatural origin, but 
apprehended, nevertheless, mechanically, as the result of a spiritual 
process which begins and ends with the sinner himself. The expe- 
rience of the supposed supernatural, in this case, stands in the 
same relation to the actual power of the new birth, that magic 
bears to the true idea of a miracle. Religion does not get the sin- 
ner, but it is the sinner who 'gets religion.' Justification is taken 
in fact by feeling, not by faith ; and in this way falls back as fully 
into the sphere of self-righteousness as though it were expected 
from works under any other form. In both the views which have 
been mentioned, as grounded either in a change of purpose or a 
change of feeling, religion is found to be in the end the product 
properly of the sinner himself. It is wholly subjective and there- 
fore visionary, and false. The theory we have been contemplating 
then, as included practically in the S3^stem of New Measures, is a 
great and terrible heresy, which is calculated to deceive and destroy 
a vast multitude of souls. 

" The proper fruits of Pelagianism follow the system invariably, 
in proportion exactly to the extent in which it may be suffered in 
any case to prevail. With regard to this point a most ample field 
for instruction is presented in the history of the great religious 
movement over which Mr. Finney presided some years ago, in cer- 
tain parts of this country. Years of faithful pastoral service on the 
part of a different class of ministers, working in a wholly different 
style, have hardly yet sufficed to restore to something like spiritual 
fruitfulness and beauty the field in Northern New York, over which 
the system then passed, as a wasting fire in the fulness of its 
strength. 

" In man}" places, a morbid thirst for excitement may be said to 
exhaust the whole interest that is felt in religion. The worst er- 
rors stand in close juxtaposition with the most bold pretensions to 
the highest order of Christian experience. All might seem to be- 
gin in the Spirit, and yet all is perpetually ending in the Flesh. 
The system, properly speaking, is not new. The same theoiy of 
religion has, in all ages, led substantially to the same style of ac- 
tion, and this has been followed by substantially the same bad re- 
sults. No religious community can grow and prosper in a solid 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 169 

way, where this false theory of religion is allowed to have any 
considerable authority ; because it will always stand in the way of 
those deeper and more silent forms of action, by which alone it is 
possible for this end to be accomplished." 

After the Tract had thus by a thorough analysis demonstrated 
the inward weakness of the Anxious Bench system, it goes on in 
a final chapter to point out in the way of contrast something older, 
better and more enduring. This it finds in what, for the sake of 
gymplicity, it calls the system of the Catechism. It then lays aside 
its negative, or polemic character, and becomes positive in its views, 
without which all its reasoning would have been worse than vain. 
To pull down is not the most difficult work, even in religion, but 
to build up on a better foundation calls for more wisdom and 
strength. Hie labor, hoc opus est. 

"The theory of religion," says the author, "in which the Cate- 
chism stands is vastly more deep and comprehensive and, of course, 
vastly more earnest also than that which lies at the foundation of 
the other S3 r stem. This latter we have seen to be characteristically 
Pelagian, with narrow views of the nature of sin, and confused ap- 
prehensions of the difference between the flesh and the spirit ; in- 
volving in the end the gross and radical error that conversion is to 
be considered, in one shape or another, the product of the sinner's 
own will, and not truly and strictly a new creation in Jesus Christ 
b} T the power of Cod. This is an old error which has often put on 
the fairest appearances, seeming even to go bej^ond the general life 
of the Church in the measure of its zeal and spiritualnry. But now 
in opposition to all this, the true theory of religion carries us con- 
tinually beyond the individual to the view of a far deeper and more 
general form of existence, in which his particular life is represented 
as standing. Thus sin is not simply the offspring of a particular 
will, putting itself forth in the form of actual transgression; but a 
wrong habit of humanity itself, a general and universal force, 
which includes and rules the entire existence of the individual man 
from the start. This point is well maintained by Dr. Sartorius, 
one of the most distinguished Lutheran divines of the present age. 
Sin as a disease is organic, rooted in the race, and cannot be over- 
come in any case by a force less deep and general than itself. As 
well might we look for the acorn to forsake in its growth the type 
of its proper species, and to put forth the form of a mountain ash 
or stately elm. So deep and broad is the ruin from which man 
is to be delivered. 

"And here again the same depth and breadth of view is pre- 
11 



170 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-184:4 [DlV. YIII 

sented to us also in the Christian salvation itself. Man is the sub- 
ject of it, but not the author of it, in any sense. His nature is 
restorable, but it can never restore itself. The restoration, there- 
fore, to be real, must begin beyond the individual. In this case, as 
in the other, the general must go before the particular, and support 
it as its proper ground. Thus humanity, fallen in Adam, is made 
to undergo a resurrection in Christ, and so restored flows over or- 
ganically, as in the other case, to all in whom its life appears. The 
sinner is saved then by an inward living union with Christ, as real 
as the bond by which he had been joined in the first instance to 
Adam. This union is reached and maintained, through the medium 
of the Church, by the power of the Holy Ghost. It constitutes a 
new life, the ground of which is not in the particular subject of it 
at all, but in Christ, the organic root of the Church. The partic- 
ular subject lives, not properly speaking in the acts of his own 
will, separately considered, but in the power of a vast generic life, 
that lies wholly bej^ond his will, and has now begun to manifest 
itself through him, as the law and type of his will itself, as well as 
of his whole being. As born of the Spirit, he is himself spiritual, 
and capable of true righteousness. Thus his salvation begins, and 
thus it is carried forward, till it becomes complete in the resur- 
rection of the great daj^. From first to last, it is a power which 
he does not so much apprehend as he is apprehended by it, com- 
prehended in it, and carried along with it, as something infinitely 
more deep and lasting than himself. 

" Great purposes and great efforts exist only when the sense of 
the general overpowers the sense of the particular, and the last is 
constrained to become tributary to the tendencies and purposes of 
the first. There ma} T be a great show of strength where the man 
acts simply from and for himself; noise, agitation, passion, reach- 
ing even to violence; but it will be only a display of imbecility 
when all is done. The will acting in this way is very weakness it- 
self, and all the blustering and violence it may put on serves but to 
expose the deficiencj^ of strength that prevails within. To acquire, 
in any case, true force, it must fall back on a power more general 
than itself. And so it is found that in the sphere of religion par- 
ticularly, the Pelagian theory, whether in thought or action, is 
always more impotent for practical purposes than that to which it 
stands opposed. The action, which is produced, may be noisy, fit- 
.ful, violent, but it can never cany with it the depth, the force, the 
fulness that are found to characterize the life of the soul, when set 
in motion by the other view. Religion in this form becomes 



Chap. XYIII] the anxious bench controversy if 1 

strictly a life of God in the soul. So far as this life prevails it is 
tranquil, profound, and free. It overcomes the world; "not by 
might and by power," the unequal, restless, fitful and spasmodic 
efforts of the flesh, but by the Spirit of the Lord. 

"Both the ruin of man and his recovery rest on a general 
ground, which is beyond himself as an individual. If saved at all, 
he is to be saved by the force of a spiritual constitution, established 
by God for the purpose, the provisions of which go far beyond the 
resources of his own will, and are expected to reach him not so 
much through the measure of his particular life, as by the medium 
of a new general life' with which he is to be filled and animated 
from without. This spiritual constitution is brought to bear upon 
him in the Church, b}- means and agencies which God has ap- 
pointed, and clothed with power expressly for this end. Hence 
where the system of the Catechism prevails, great account is made 
of the Church and all reliance placed upon the means of grace 
comprehended in its constitution, as all sufficient under God for 
the accomplishment of its own purposes. These are felt to be 
something more than mere devices of human ingenuity and are 
honored and diligently used accordingly as the wisdom of God, 
and the power of God unto salvation. Due regard is had to the 
idea of the Church as something more than a bare abstraction, the 
conception of an aggregate of parts mechanically brought together. 
It is apprehended rather as an organic life, springing perpetually 
from the same ground, and identical with itself at every part. In 
this view, the Church is truly the mother of all her children. They 
do not impart life to her, but she imparts life to them. Christ 
lives in the Church and through the Church in its particular mem- 
bers ; just as Adam lives in the human race generally considered, 
and through the race in every individual man. This view of the 
relation of the Church to the salvation of the individual exerts an 
important influence, in the case before us, on the whole system of 
action by which it is sought to reach this object. 

" Where it prevails a serious interest will be taken in the case of 
children, as proper subjects for the Christian salvation, from the 
earliest age. Infants, born in the Church, are regarded and treated 
as members of it from the beginning, and this privilege is felt to 
be something more than an empty show. Children growing up in 
the bosom of the Church, under the faithful application of the 
means of grace, should be quickened into spiritual life in a com- 
paratively quiet way, and spring up numerously 'as willows by 
the water courses,' to adorn the Christian profession, without be- 



172 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

ing able at all to trace the process by which the glorious change 
has been effected. 

" Otherwise, as a matter of course, baptism becomes a barren 
sign, and the children of the Church are left to grow up like the 
children of the world, under most heartless and disastrous general 
neglect. Only where the sj^stem of the Catechism is in honor and 
vigorous force, do we ever find a property earnest and comprehen- 
sive regard exhibited for the salvation of the j^oimg ; a regard that 
operates not partially and occasionally only, bat follows its subject 
with all-compassing interest, like the air and light of heaven, from 
the first breath of infancy onwards ; a regard that cannot be satis- 
fied in their behalf with the spasmodic experience of the Anxious 
Bench, but travails in birth for them continually, until Christ be 
formed in their hearts the hope of glory. 

"Thus due regard is had to the family, the domestic institution, 
as a vital and fundamental fact, in the general organization of the 
Church ; and all proper pains are taken to promote religion in fam- 
ilies, as the indispensable condition of its prosperity under all other 
forms. Parents are engaged to pray for their children, and to 
watch over them, with true spiritual solicitude, continually endeav- 
oring to draw them to the Church. With such feelings, they will 
have, of course, a family altar, and daily sacrifice of prayer and 
praise in the midst of their house. The}' will be careful, too, to 
instil into the minds of their children the great truths of religion, 
'in the house, and by the way.' Catechetical instruction, in par- 
ticular, will be faithfully emploj'ed from the beginning. And to 
crown all, the power of a pious and hoty example will be sought, 
as necessaiy to impart life to all other forms of influence. All 
this belongs property to the sj^stem of the Catechism. 

" In close connection with this domestic training, the ministra- 
tions of the Church come in, under a more public form, to carry 
forward the same work. She feels herself bound to watch over the 
children born in her bosom, and to follow them with counsel, in- 
struction and prayer, from one year always on to another. The}- 
are required to attend upon the services of the sanctuary. Espe- 
cially, the process of catechetical instruction is emplo3 T ed with 
constancy and patience, to cast, if possible, both the understand- 
ing and the heart into the mould of evangelical doctrine. 

" The regular administration of the Word and Sacraments forms, 
of course, an essential part of the same system. The ordinances 
of the sanctuary, being of divine institution, are regarded as chan- 
nels of a power higher than themselves ; and are administered ac- 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 173 

cordingly with such earnestness and diligence as bespeak a proper 
confidence in their virtue, under this view. 

"And then to crown all a living ministry is needed to build up 
the interests of Christianity in a firm and sure way ; a ministry 
apt to teach ; sermons full of unction and light ; zeal for the inter- 
ests of holiness ; catechetical training ; due attention to order and 
discipline; and patient perseverance in the details of the ministerial 
work. And then the system includes the wide range of the proper 
pastoral work, as distinguished from the pulpit. The faithful min- 
ister is found preaching the Gospel like Paul from house to house, 
as well as in a more public wa}^ ; visiting the families that are un- 
der his care, expressly for this purpose; conversing with the old 
and the young on the great subject of personal religion; mingling 
with the poor in their humble dwellings as well as with those in 
better circumstances; ministering the instructions of religion, or 
its consolations a,t the bed of the sick or dying; and in one word, 
laying himself out in continual labors of love towards all, as the- 
servant of all for Jesus' sake. In these circumstances, the holiness 
of his own life particularly becomes an agency powerful bej-ond 
all others, to recommend and enforce the Gospel he is called to 
preach. His veiy presence will cany with it the weight of an im- 
pressive testimony in favor of the truth. 

"These are the agencies by which alone the Kingdom of God 
may be expected to go steadily forward. When these are employed 
there will be revivals; but they will be only as it were the natural 
fruit of the general culture going before, without that spasmodic, 
meteoric character, which too often distinguishes excitements under 
this name ; while the life of religion will show itself abidingly at 
work in the reigning temper of the Church at all other times. 
Happy the congregation that may be placed under such spiritual 
auspices! Happ}^ for our German Zion, if such might be the sys- 
tem that should prevail to the exclusion of every other within her 
borders. We may style it, for the sake of distinction, the system 
of the Catechism. God is not so much in the whirlwind, earthquake 
and tempest, as in the still small voice of the falling dew or grow- 
ing grass." 

The pamphlet of fifty-six pages immediately excited attention. 
In the circumstances, when religious excitements ran high, it was 
a very bold thing for the author, a professor of theology, to rebuke 
them. It exposed him to the danger of being classed with " certain 
lewd fellows of the baser sort," who were opposed to all kinds of 
religion. It was for him at first an experiment of a more or less 



174 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

doubtful character, aud for a time at least he was auxious to know 
the result. His mind, however, was not left very long in suspense. 
Prominent laymen, as well as ministers from all parts of the Church, 
wrote to him in commendation of the position he had assumed. 
Among these were some from whom an approval was more or less 
doubtful, as they had apparently committed themselves to the sys- 
tem of new measures. The Messenger, the organ of the Church, 
up to this time not very decided one way or the other, came out in 
an editorial from Rev. S. R. Fisher endorsing the Tract and its doc- 
trines. The conservative religious press generally did the same 
thing. The Christian Intelligencer, Dutch Reformed, said "the 
pamphlet is the production of a master mind, well informed and 
well balanced and we hope it will have a wide circulation;" and the 
Presbyterian, "that Dr. ]N"evm had in a thorough, sober and forci- 
ble measure expressed the new measure system of religion." The 
Princeton Review noticed the Tract in highly commendatoiy terms, 
and concurred in the argument against the Anxious Bench which 
by a false zeal had been "erected into a third sacrament." 

In other directions, however, as was expected, the Tract excited 
an intense opposition, ending in a long and angry controversy. 
Religious excitements, or the so-called revivals, were the order of 
the day in many communities, to which there had been little or no 
hinderance; but now a voice from Mercersburg, firm and decided, 
spoke out that their aggressive spirit should go no farther, so far at 
least as the German Churches were concerned, if it could possibly 
be prevented. It was not long before the issue was understood, 
and there was no lack of combatants rushing into the field. Mr. 
Finney had a few disciples in the Reformed Church, of whom the 
Rev. Jacob Helfenstein was the most ardent. He felt it incumbent 
on himself to give his testimoirr, in a number of articles, against a 
publication which he considered as inimical to vital godliness. He 
admitted what he called the abuses of the revival S3^stem, but de- 
fended the system itself as the work of God. Dr. Xevin consid- 
ered both as one and the same thing, and that was the difference 
between him and his opponent in this controversy. Over a system 
that left out the sacramental and churchly elements of Christianity, 
he believed that he was authorized to write the word " Tekel." 

The Reformed Synod of Ohio, where new measures were in 
vogue, recommended to its ministers to read with candor the little 
book from the East, but one of its members, less noble than his 
brethren, became recalcitrant, and vowed that he would not "touch 
the wicked little thing with a ten-foot pole." In some other places 



Chap. XVIII] the anxious bench controversy 175 

in the Church, similar naughty speeches were made by emotional 
Christians against the " godless professor," who was represented as 
opposing the progress of true religion. Various surrounding bod- 
ies, predominantly Methodistical, among whom the Anxious Bench 
had become more or less a means of grace, thought they were at- 
tacked as denominations — a palpable mistake — and that it was their 
duty to repel this assault upon vital Christianity. Their replies 
were amusing and interesting as specimens of natural simplicity. 

The Tract made an immediate and wide-spread sensation in the 
Lutheran Church, fully as much so as in the Reformed. There 
the two parties, the old and the new schools, were gathering to- 
gether into two different camps, and their relations to each other 
were strained. The former, holding fast to the traditions of their 
grand old Church, were, in a measure, helpless and somewhat 
drowsy, if not asleep, like their Reformed brethren in like cir- 
cumstances. The voice from Mercersburg came upon them like a 
thunder-clap, but it was just what they wished to hear. Some of 
their clergy were quite outspoken and encouraged their people to 
read the Anxious Bench, which they were in fact very willing to do. 
It was a subject in which they were interested and wished for informa- 
tion. When they were told that the writer, Dr. Nevin, had come 
from the Presbyterian Church, which they supposed had a hand in 
starting the so-called new measures, their wonder was only in- 
creased. Never before were the Lutherans of this wing more 
friendly to the Reformed. It was an illustration of the deep unity 
subsisting, in fact, between the two denominations, in consequence 
of which no vital movement could take place in the one without af- 
fecting the other. 

This portion of the Lutheran Church had an opportunity to ex- 
press itself in the English language through the Lutheran Standard, 
published in the West, at Columbus, Ohio. Its first editor, Eman- 
uel Green wait, had travelled on horse-back to Ohio from Maryland 
as a licentiate in 1831, and labored more or less as a missionary 
until 1836, when he was regularly ordained. In 1842, while serving 
numerous congregations, he was elected editor of the Standard. 
Although surrounded by the wildest fanaticism in the congregations, 
he continued steadfast in the moderate, conservative Lutheran faith 
which he had brought with him from the East. As an editor he was 
decided in his utterances, and when the Anxious Bench controversjr 
broke out at Mercersburg, he sustained Dr. Nevin, extracted largely 
from his pamphlet for the benefit of his readers, and affirmed that 
" the publication was timely, long and loudly called for." His paper 



176 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

manifested a truly Christian spirit, and was read with interest both 
in the East and the West. Subsequently Dr. Greenwalt became 
highly useful in his own denomination, wrote a number of edifying- 
books, and served in various responsible positions until his death 
in 1885, universally esteemed and honored. He was among the 
first to call forth a reaction against the revival S3^stem in favor of 
conservative Lutheranism, and was a prince in the Lutheran Israel 
of this country, to a much larger extent than he in his humble es- 
timate of himself and services had probably imagined. Of him it 
may be truthfully said that his works do follow him. 

In the other branch of the sister Church, which was waking up 
and putting off dull sloth as fast as it could in the diligent use of 
what was apparently a new means of grace, the Mercersburg pro- 
test was well received and regarded as opportune by many. The 
sj^stem, they said, had been useful in various waj^s, but it had had 
its day, and ought now to be given up for something better. They 
were getting tired of it. A larger number, perhaps, only halted 
and began to think. There were, however, likewise man}' others 
who had faith in it and thought it ought to be upheld as the mighty 
power of God. Dr. Benjamin Kurtz, editor of the Lutheran Ob- 
server at Baltimore, one of the most prominent organizers of the 
new order in the Lutheran Church, sometimes called its coiypheus, 
instinctively felt that his own position was compromised, and so 
he went to work to fight for it. He wrote many articles in reply to 
Dr. Kevin's book, and kept toiling at his up-hill work from week to 
week until his readers probably became tired of reading his papers. 
His original idea was to publish them in book-form, but they were 
never called for as far as we know. The} T would have probably 
made a larger book than the one he attempted to refute. Dr. Nevin 
had said something about women and young persons who were 
most liable to be carried along in a religious excitement, in reply 
to which Dr. Kurtz replied that "females and persons who were 
quite young have souls to be saved, as well as men and persons who 
are advanced in years ; nay, mere boys and girls have an eternal in- 
terest pending;" and then turning on his opponent he asks him 
"whether hysterical girls have not souls to be saved." To this Dr. 
Nevin replied that " after due reflection it seems necessaiy to answer 
this searching interrogatory in the affirmative,'''' 

The Bev. Beuben Weiser, one of Dr. Kurtz's warm admirers, at 
the time, engaged in revivals in the mountain districts of Bedford 
Co., Pa., and full of the revival spirit, published a somewhat breezy 
pamphlet on the Mourners' Bench, in reply to the Anxious Bench. 



Chap. XYIII] the anxious bench controversy 11 ? 

In his zeal he denounced the Mercersburg professor as well as his 
book, because, as he affirmed, he was interfering with God's own 
work on earth. He used some of the terms applied to the perse- 
cutors of the Apostle Paul at Thessalonica, which need not here 
be repeated. Dr. Nevin noticed him in a humorous way, styling 
him the "Mountain blast," as he came up next in order among his 
assailants. At that time he was young and inexperienced, but he 
lived to grow wiser as age advanced. A few years ago he came 
out in the Lutheran Observer, in an admirable article, reviewing 
the past, and to the surprise of eveiybody took back his offensive 
language towards Dr. Nevin, and affirmed that he was then con- 
vinced that he was right in publishing such a work as he did at the 
time. Dr. Weiser was earnest and sincere in his convictions, and 
rendered himself useful to his church in his clay and generation. 
Not long after h's noble and candid letter in the Observer, he 
rested from his labors on earth, and fell asleep in the Lord. Others 
of his brethren showed equal candor, acknowledged their error and 
thanked Dr. Nevin for having written the Tract for the Times, as 
something called for in its day. 

Dr. Nevin waited until he had received six replies, five of them 
from different denominations, and then answered them all in a sin- 
gle article in the Messenger, commencing with the famous quota- 
tion from Virgil : 

Venti, velut a g mine facto, 
Qua data porta, ruunt et terras turbine per -flout. 

His notices of each one were short, crispy, humorous, and good- 
natured, and produced a roar of laughter throughout the churches. 
The vindication was followed by several other more lengthy articles 
of a defensive character, in which the writer, in his usual trenchant 
style showed the difference between "a true and bastard revival." 
This practically ended the eontroversj^. The object arrived at in 
the publication of the Anxious Bench was secured. The system 
of revivals prevalent at the time, with the theory underlying them, 
was weighed and found wanting in the churches of German origin. 
The Catechetical system was rehabilitated, the Mercersburg pro- 
fessor was sustained, and he was allowed full freedom to labor in 
building up true historic Christianity in harmon}- with its spirit 
and life. The controversy was attended with benefits in many di- 
rections. Its influence on the Lutheran branch of the German 
Church was in man} T respects salutary ; in the Reformed, it was the 
turning point in its theological and religious life, from which fol- 
lowed its subsequent churchly tendency and many other useful re- 
sults — as a healthy historical reaction. 



CHAPTER XIX 

IT was customary for the Goethean Literary Societ} T of Marshall 
College to celebrate the anniversary of the birth-clay of Goethe, 
on the 19th of August, on which occasion some one, generally a pro- 
fessor, was secured to pronounce a suitable discourse. Dr. Ranch had 
thus delivered a very elaborate eulogy on Goethe and his command- 
ing genius, which unhappily has never appeared in print. In the 
year 1842 it devolved on Dr. Nevin to deliver the usual address, 
when he availed himself of the opportunity to call the attention of 
the students to the great and noble language which Goethe spoke, 
of which his writings were at the same time the mirror and the 
brightest ornament. Its characteristic merits and its claims upon 
the regard of American students constituted the theme of the dis- 
course. By this time the speaker had fully mastered the language 
himself, and was well qualified to introduce it to others. His 
thoughts on the subject are still as worthy of attention as when 
they were expressed in his own vigorous language, and we there- 
fore furnish the reader the entire address, which is, in part at least, 
a philosophical essay, omitting the introduction. 

To deal with the subject properly, we must attempt in the first 
place to give some account of the nature of language in general, 
with the view of showing on what grounds and under what views it 
deserves to be made in any case an object of study. Only in this 
way can we reasonably expect to come to any satisfactory result, in 
trying to estimate the comparative worth of the German, or any 
other particular language, to which our attention ma} T be turned. 
Yast ignorance and error prevail very generally on this subject. 
To German}- in particular, above all other lands, is the world indebt- 
ed, in modern times, for even a partial insight into the great and 
stupendous mystery which is here brought into view. No field of 
inquiry perhaps has yielded more beautiful or splendid results. 

Language stands in the most intimate and vital connection with 
thought. There is no room for the supposition of the latter, in the 
case of the human mind, apart from the presence of the former. We 
cannot with airy propriety speak of either, as older than the other. 
When the question is debated, whether language be of human or 
divine origin, a wrong view of the case, as it regards this point, is 

(178) 



Chap. XIX] the German language 119 

commonly taken on both sides. Those who suppose it to have been 
invented by man, and those who refer it to supernatural communi- 
cation, have seemed generally to agree in thinking that the mind 
might be developed, to some considerable extent, before the use of 
language was enjoyed. In the first case, reason has been regarded 
as designing and contriving an artificial scheme for its own accom- 
modation ; while according to the other hypothesis, the convenience 
is supposed to have been provided for it by special inspiration, 
answerable to the demands of the case. Under both views, the re- 
lation between speech and thought is taken to be merely external. 
The use of language, it is assumed, is simply to serve as a medium for 
the communication of thought. In its whole nature, accordingly, 
it is made to appear comparatively mechanical and dead ; as though 
the proper life of the mind were something different altogether, 
which has come only by arbitrary conventional usage among men 
to be represented in this way. But every such conception of the 
case is superficial and false. Language is no invention of man. 
Neither is it on the other hand an instrument, with which he has 
been furnished, ready made, from God. It is the natural, necessary 
product of his own spiritual nature. It is a constituent part of the 
life of the soul itself. This cannot be developed without manifest- 
ing itself under this form. As the germ, in a lower sphere of ex- 
istence, throws forth stem and leaves, in the mere process of growth, 
so the rational nature of man expands itself from the beginning in the 
form of thought and speech. Where the one has begun to appear, 
there the other must show itself at the same time. To talk of con- 
trivance, calculation or conventional understanding, as concerned 
in the production of language, is just as absurd as it would be to 
talk of any thing of the sort as concerned in the production of 
thought itself. The body is not more strictly united in one life 
with the soul, than language is with the exercise of reason. The 
two forms of life are in their ground indeed identical. To think, is 
to speak. Language is necessary, not simply for the communica- 
tion of thought, but for its existence also and development. Ideas 
must become concrete, in the form of words, to be distinctly dis- 
cerned, and permanently retained by the mind, from whose depths 
they spring. The workings of the soul continue altogether chaotic, 
till language comes in to give shape to its creations; and order and 
light within it keep pace afterwards exactly with the power of using 
words. The internal and the external, in the case, go hand in hand 
together. 

Under this view then, language, like all life, is organic. It is not 



180 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

made up of a great multitude of parts, brought mechanically to- 
gether in an external way. It evolves itself, as a whole, from its 
own living ground in the soul, deriving both form and substance 
from the creative force which it carries in its own nature. Its 
principle is in itself, and not in any thing out of itself. Like the 
growth of the plant, like the development of the animal from the 
punctum saliens upwards and outwards to mature life, it is strictly 
and altogether an organic production. It is indeed the evolution 
of the life of the mind itself-, the form in which it becomes concrete. 
By means of language, thought makes its escape from the germ, in 
which it would otherwise continue to sleep as a mere possibility, 
and emerges into the sphere of reality. Language is thought itself 
corporealized and made external, and it must be penetrated of 
course with the same organic life in all its parts. 

The different languages then that exist in the world are the types 
of so many different conformations of mind, into which the general 
life of the human race has come to be cast. If it be asked, why 
there should be so many languages instead of one, if the growth of 
speech be thus organic and necessaiy ; we have onbv to ask again 
in reply, why the mind itself, as it spreads itself out in countless 
ramifications, is found existing .under so many phases, as various 
as the forms of speech which have come into use. The origin of 
language, and its meaning universally, must be sought in the nisus 
or effort of the soul to develop itself in a way suitable to its own 
nature. But this nisus, modified and controlled by the diversified 
educational influences which have wrought upon mind in different 
circumstances, has never vet accomplished more than an approx- 
imation, under various forms, towards the resolution of its own 
problem. As in the world of nature no individual form fully ex- 
presses the idea of the species to which it belongs, so here no 
language can be regarded as a full, perfectly symmetrical, and abso- 
lutely transparent, corporification of the true inward life of thought ; 
although that is the ideal which it has been propo3ed in every case 
to realize. The several lano-uao-es of the world are the results, we 
may saj-, of so many distinct efforts on the part of the soul, to 
evolve in an adequate way its own life, conditioned and determined 
by the circumstances in which it has been variously placed. Each 
one accordingly is the standing type of the mental conformation, 
out of which it originally took its rise; and in this form, it rules 
and controls also the life of thought itself. Language once estab- 
lished becomes the necessaiy channel of thinking for the people to 
whom it belongs. Tast differences may characterize the mental life 



Chap. XIX] the German language 181 

of a nation, partly constitutional and partly the result of education. 
The range of thought in one case may be immensely more free and 
large than it is in another. And so in different ages, the same 
nation may present widely different aspects of cultivation. The 
sphere of its thinking may be continually growing more wide, so 
that no comparison shall seem to hold between the poverty of its 
conceptions in one age and their overflowing fulness in another. 
Still under all these differences, we say, the life of the nation carries 
upon it its own distinctive form, represented and at the same time 
determined by the language in which it is accustomed to think and 
speak. This is the mould in which thought is cast, from generation 
to generation. The identity of an organism does not depend on its 
external volume. The twig may grow to be a giant oak, and yet 
its life will be the same. So a language may admit indefinite ex- 
pansion, and with its expansion mind may spread itself out with 
corresponding volume; but in the end the language carries the same 
type, and embraces the same conformation of thought. It is expan- 
sion in a certain kind, and according to a certain organic law. 
Thought continues free and creative, but not absolutely : it must 
act in the direction of the general life to which it belongs. Thus the 
language of every people is at once the creature and the creator of 
its specific intellectual and moral life. 

Thus we are prepared to estimate, in a general way, the import- 
ance of the study of languages. The grounds on which this is made 
to rest frequently by its advocates are such as may be considered 
treasonable to the cause the}^ are adduced to support. Language, 
is the life of the soul, externally considered. To study a language 
then, is to study the soul itself, under one of the manifold forms in 
which it is found struggling to bring its secret nature into light. 
No subject, rightly apprehended, can be less mechanical and dead; 
no study better adapted to form and improve the mind, in an edu- 
cational way. Such study is not a mere work of memory, emploj^ed 
in treasuring up words and rules ; it is a constant exercise in think- 
ing, and in no other way can the same discipline, under this view, 
be as well secured. To master the language of a people is at the 
same time to enter their spirit, and to become acquainted with their 
character, as it never can be understood without this b}^ any other 
form of observation. The history of a nation, its customs and in- 
stitutions, become fairly intelligible, only when we are enabled to 
approach them through the medium of its own tongue. In making 
ourselves familiar with the language of a nation, we penetrate as it 
were into the inmost recesses of its life. Whatever knowledge we 



182 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

may seem to have of it without this, must be considered superficial 
and more or less visionary. We cannot understand the mind which 
a language embodies simply by report. It is not enough to be told, 
in our own tongue, what men of a different speech have thought, 
and spoken and done. All that can give us only dead representa- 
tions of their life, which to become animated again for us at all, are 
made to borrow a new spirit from ourselves, and so to appear under 
a complexion and expression foreign altogether from their original 
nature. By being forced simply to pass over to our sphere of think- 
ing, the life of a foreign people is in fact cast into a new mould and 
clothed with a new form. To understand it fairly, we must forsake 
our own sphere and pass over ourselves into the foreign world, in 
which it has its true and proper home. We must commune with it, 
in its own language. There it meets us in its actual concrete shape. 
There it has its own complexion and expression. There it becomes 
intelligible. And now its literature, history, legislation, science 
and social life, begin to appear in their true light also. The ke}^ by 
which their secret significance is finally brought into view is the 
spirit of the nation corporealized in its language. 

Eveiy new language, then, which the student masters widens the 
region of his soul, and renders his inward life, intellectually con- 
sidered, more large and free. The man who has never been from 
home is apt to make his own particular existence the measure of 
the absolute and the universal. Restricted to one single stand-point 
of observation, and pent up in the narrow sphere of his individual 
history, he is accustomed to think of all that lies beyond as bar- 
barous and wrong, exactly in the proportion in which it ma} T vary 
from his own experience. Travelling is well suited to overcome the 
force of this narrow habit. Reading generally, where it is wisely 
conducted, may be made happily to serve the same purpose. By 
quitting his own position, and entering into contact with other 
forms of life, remote either in space or in time, the man who thus 
goes abroad finds the sphere of his existence made more wide and 
free. So in the case before us. To enter a new language, is to 
burst the barriers which have previously circumscribed the life of 
the soul. It is indeed the same life which animates the human 
nature, wherever it is to be found. But it is the same life under 
various aspects, and turning different sides of its manifold gen- 
erality to the view of the beholder. Every language presents it 
under a phase, which is peculiarly its own. As we enter other lan- 
guages, we make ourselves at home to the same extent in foreign 
systems of thought. The idea of mind in its generality is brought 



Chap. XIX] the German language 183 

home to our consciousness. The particular is no longer mistaken 
for the universal. Our existence is, as it were, multiplied, and 
made to have more than a single side. Without this, we are not 
prepared to estimate properly foreign modes of being, intellectual 
or moral. There is always indeed a measure of presumption in- 
volved in our conduct, where we undertake to pronounce an abso- 
lute judgment on the character of a people, or upon their mental 
constitution, without having first entered the sphere of their actual 
life, in some measure at least, by making ourselves acquainted with 
their language. 

We may see finally, from the view now presented of the general 
nature of language, on what ground we are authorized to attribute 
to some languages an instrinsic superiority over others. The end 
contemplated in speech is in all cases one and the same. It springs 
universally from the nisus of the roul, to evolve itself in a concrete 
form. Under the action of this deep mysterious force, thought and 
language burst forth simultaneously, like the vegetable sprout 
breaking from its germ, and form thenceforward an inseparable life. 
The problem to be solved in the case, when languages had their 
origin, was the production of a living form that should fully reveal, 
with adequate and exactly commensurate expression, the organic 
idea of the mind itself. The various languages that appear are the 
result of so many different efforts made to realize this end. All of 
course cannot be equally perfect They are different, as being more 
or less successful approaches to the ideal, which it has been the 
object of all to reach. They excel in the degree, in which they are 
internally fitted to forward a free, full, symmetrical growth of the 
spirit, in its most general form. A perfect language would be like 
a garment of light, unfolding with clear transparency the life it was 
formed to invest and represent. Among existing languages, some 
approximate to this perfection much more nearly than others, and 
are entitled to respect and admiration accordingly. It is not the 
amount of its literature then simply — although this may reasonably 
be taken as a separate consideration to recommend the study of it — 
that forms the distinctive worth of a particular language. Nor is 
this determined by the mere cultivation, with which it may have 
been refined and enriched in its own nature, under any view. A 
language may be comparatively poor in words at a given time, and 
yet vastly superior in its constitution to another, whose words are 
like the leaves of the forest. The perfection of an organic produc- 
tion must never be measured by its volume. Cultivation in the 
case of a language cannot change its organic nature, cannot trans- 



184 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

fund it into a new and different type. It ma}' grow and become 
continually more rich in words ; but as a garment for the soul, it 
must remain always substantial^ the same. Thus a rude barbarous 
people ma}' have a language, which shall instrinsically surpass that 
of the most polished ; and all that m&y be wanted to make the 
superiority clear to all, would be in such a case that it should be 
organically extended to such volume, as to make it parallel with 
the other in point of cultivation. The main difference between lan- 
guages lies in their intrinsic character, without regard to culture, 
and forms a part of their original inalienable constitution. 

I proceed now to consider directly, as proposed in the beginning, 
the grounds on which I conceive the German language in particular 
to be entitled to respect as an object of study, especially in our cir- 
cumstances. The views, which have been given of the nature of 
language in general, will not be without their use, it is trusted, in 
assisting us to come to an intelligent judgment on this subject. It 
will not be expected, however, that I should attempt to determine 
the precise value of the German language, intrinsically considered, 
as compared with other languages, ancient or modern, according to 
the theoretic principles which have now been stated. I entertain 
no such presumptuous thought ; and will not consider it necessary, 
therefore, to confine myself to views, carrying in any measure the 
form of a regular practical application of the theoiw. My object is 
siinpfy to recommend the German language to your respect, by an} T 
considerations that may seem to be pertinent to the purpose — 
satisfied if the remarks thus far made on the subject of language in 
general niay only assist, under any point of view, directly or indi- 
rectly, in leading to a correct estimate of the case. 

The phj'sician, Gorojjius, maintained that the German language 
was spoken b}' our first parents in the Garden of Eden. Without 
challenging for it this high and venerable antiquity, we ma}- be 
allowed to refer to its origin and history, under a different view, as 
a primary ground of distinction in its favor. It differs from all the 
other cultivated languages of modern Europe, in being, to borrow 
a term from itself, "eine Ursprache," a primitive language, and not 
one of mixed origin and constitution. It is not meant by this, that 
it has had its source strictl}' in itself, as it now exists. Recent in- 
vestigations have shown quite clearly that it sprang originally, as 
did also the Latin, Greek and Persian, from the oriental Sanskrit. 
But however it may have started, it carries in its nature all the dis- 
tinctive properties of a primitive tongue. It is the original Teu- 
tonic language, as it was brought with the race who spoke it from 



Chap. XIX] the German language 185 

Asia to Europe. The general language was not thus preserved 
by all the tribes of Teutonic origin. It maintained its ground 
only among the Germans, strictly so called. They kept themselves 
permanently to the same soil, and held fast to the language of their 
fathers. In other cases, the stock assumed a new complexion by 
mingling with other races, and fell at the same time into new forms 
of language. The languages of modern Europe, generally, are mixed 
in their composition. The Italian, Spanish and French are made 
up to a great extent of material supplied from the Latin. The 
English is the old Saxon, filled out with forms from the Latin, 
Greek and French. These languages do not indeed cease to be 
organic, by being thus mixed. Each of them has still its own soul, 
throwing forth its distinctive life in all the parts of which it is com- 
posed. The mixture by which it grows is not in the way of out- 
ward accretion simply. The foreign material is taken up into the 
system, so as to form with it one life. But the growth of a lan- 
guage, in such circumstances, must be more or less stunted and 
cramped ; like the growth of a tree, planted in some uncongenial 
soil or excluded from the open light of heaven. The development 
cannot be free, full and harmonious ; and it will be characterized by 
some want of symmetry and compact strength, answerable to the 
extent in which the union of heterogeneous elements may prevail. 
From this defect the German is entirely clear. Its life is all its 
own. Like the free and hardy race, whose spirit it is made to ■ 
mirror, it has in all ages refused to bend its neck to a foreign yoke. 
In this respect it is as primitive and original as the Greek, which it 
resembles in all points more than any other modern tongue. 

It might however be thus primitive in its constitution, and yet 
have no great claims upon our respect. It might be in point of 
development rude and circumscribed, like the language of one of 
our own Indian tribes, which nobody but a missionary or a trader 
is concerned to study. But this is not the case. The German lan- 
guage did not indeed perfect itself so rapidly as the mixed tongues 
with which it has just been compared. Their form in this respect 
was perhaps favorable, within certain limits, to their progress.. 
Their life appeared more on the surface, and was on this account 
more easily matured. In due time, however, the German came up 
with them, in the career of cultivation. As a language it may be 
said now to have reached a ripe and full development. It has flung 
its branches far and wide, and covered itself with innumerable leaves 
and blossoms. It has, through various fortunes, fairly reached at 
last its Augustan age; and, whether the breadth, or depth or in- 
12 



186 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

trinsic wealth of its literature be regarded, it may justly challenge 
comparison, to say the least, with any of the tongues in which the 
civilization of modern Europe is accustomed to speak. 

As a primitive language, the German is remarkably full and rich 
in point of matter. It has been sometimes indeed stigmatized as 
poor under this view b}^ the admirers of the French tongue. But 
no judgment could well be more wide of the mark. While the 
French is said to contain about 28,000 words, it has been reckoned 
that there are in the German not less than 80,000. One writer 
carries the computation six times as high, and places it at half a 
million; which may be allowed to be sufficiently extra vagrant. 
The truth is, however, it is not easy to say where a computation of 
this kind should stop, in the case uf the German tongue. The 
modifications of meaning which words are made to assume by in- 
flection, position, combination, and production, cannot easily be 
specified. The language may be said to be, in this respect indeed, 
capable of an indefinite extension. No limits can be placed upon 
its growth. It can never be said of it that it has become perfect ; 
for that would imply fixed boundaries and borders, beyond which 
its life could not pass. We can only say of it that it is perfectible. 
Its life is formed for constant expansion and refuses to be circum- 
scribed b}^ any bounds. 

As it regards radical or stem-words, the German falls far behind 
the French. This might seem, at first view, to conflict with the gen- 
eral representations now given of its fulness and wealth. It is how- 
ever in fact in full correspondence with it. The German language 
has few roots, because it is original and self-produced. Its ground 
is wholly within itself. The French, on the other hand, has appro- 
priated a large amount of foreign material. This has no root or 
ground in the language itself, and being separated from its original 
foundation, is made to bear of course an independent form. Hence 
a multitude of words stand as roots, simply because they do not 
spring from the life of the language itself. They are of foreign 
growth, and become stem-words only by having been torn away 
from their natural connections, and forced into a S3 T stem to which 
genealogically they do not belong. The multitude of its radical or 
primary forms, in the case of the French, as compared with the sum 
total of the language, is a striking argument of its poverty. 

And here it may be remarked, at the same time by the way, that 
the French must ever be for the reason now presented also a diffi- 
cult language to learn, for those who have not been accustomed to 
speak it from childhood. A different opinion, I am awaiv, is gen- 



Chap. XIX] the German language 187 

eralty entertained with regard to this point. Boarding school 
misses, and fashionable young gentlemen with the most common 
breadth of brain, can be taught to jabber something that sounds 
like it, in the course of a few months. But so can an active parrot 
master phrases too, with quite imposing success, and be only a 
parrot when all is done. Such mechanical exploits involve no 
knowledge. Where a large portion of the words of a language are 
primary, having no internal affinity, and no common ground, wide 
room is given for uncertain and fluctuating phases of sense. A 
great deal must be perfectly arbitrary, and liable to constant 
change. Only the most intimate familiarity with the actual usus 
loquendi, in those circumstances, can be sufficient to reduce the 
Protean system to a clear representation for the mind. The French 
language, accordingly, is seldom mastered by foreigners, so as to 
make them tolerable in the use of it to those who speak it as their 
native tongue. The German, on the other hand, with its boundless 
sea of words, is by no means so difficult to master. Its roots are 
not numerous. Its forms of derivation and composition are fixed. 
Words are kept in their place, by the force of the common life, 
which by innumerable ramifications binds them together as one 
great whole. Let only the life of the language be penetrated, and 
it becomes a comparatively easy thing to follow it afterwards in its 
organic development, no matter how far it may be extended. 

The German owes its wealth of words to the capacity for expan- 
sion, which it carries in its own nature. This unfolds itself mainly 
in two forms, boundless composition and endless derivation. Words 
of all sorts can be joined together, with the most perfect ease, so as 
to give new terms, in which two different thoughts are made to meet 
in a third. Almost every word, by prefixes and suffixes of invari- 
able force, can be made to shoot out into a whole tree of derivatives., 
by which its meaning is modified in all conceivable ways. The 
Greek is uncommonly rich in this power of self-enlargement. Xo 
language of antiquity had the same expansibility, and no language 
accordingly was so free or so full. The only modern tongue that 
may be compared with it, under this view, is the German. This 
may well be considered a proud distinction. So far as derivation 
is concerned, the German is supposed to leave even the Greek be- 
hind. To estimate properly its whole advantage as it regards in- 
trinsic fruitfulness, let it be compared again with the so-called court 
language of Europe. The French has almost no expansibilit}^. It 
may be said to press already, at every point, on its established 
limits. It cannot compound with any sort of freedom. Many of 



188 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

its stein-words are perfectly barren, while the rest of them are pro- 
ductive onlv to a small extent. No fixed and universal analogies 
rule the process of derivation, as far as it is allowed to proceed. 
All is arbitrary, irregular, cold and stiff. The superiority of the 
German is like that of the giant forest oak over some slim poplar, 
shooting upwards from a city pavement. 

" Our language," says Franz Horn, "is one of free origin, spring- 
ing directly out of our nature. It is firmly settled in its root, 
which is immovable as necessity itself; but its blossoms and fruits 
are eternally manifold and eternally young. Our language is rich; 
not like a well stored cabinet of artificial curiosities, but rich as the 
spiritual nature of man himself, and like this susceptible of indefi- 
nite improvement. It cannot, in the waj- of languages of unfree 
constitution, be materially ended, and rounded in, as a finished 
system; but throws itself open still, with ever new life, to the 
service of true genius, wherever utterance is required for new 
thoughts and feelings." The French, on the contrary, he tells us, 
boasts of being shut up and completed, and it is made a great point, 
since the age of Louis XIY, to maintain its boundaries inviolate ; 
so that writers of spirit have to complain that they cannot say what 
the}' would, b}^ reason of the restraints of the language. 

To make full account, however, of the wealth of the German lan- 
guage, we must consider the inward character of the materials in 
which this wealth consists. It has been alreacl}- intimated, that it 
is emphatically a Jiving language. All languages necessarily 
enibody life ; but some have a great deal more of it than others. 
The vitalit}' of some is sickly and weak, while that of others is 
characterized by energy and strength. The French may be taken 
here again as a specimen of comparative imperfection. The mate- 
rials of which it is formed have been brought from various quarters, 
and for want of a full internal assimilation with the common ground 
on which they are made to rest, haug more or less loosely together, 
and are in the same proportion devoid of spirit. The language ac- 
cordingly, while it admits the finest polish on the surface, is artifi- 
cial and cold. In broad contrast with it, the German stands before 
us full of life. It is the direct primitive expression of the living 
mind it has been made to embod}'. From its ground upwards, 
through all successive stages of development, it has been one and 
the same organic force, materializing itself and clothing itself with 
form, with free spontaneous growth. Eveiy foreign element has 
been steadily repelled. All is the result strictly and exclusively of 
self-evolution. The whole is pervaded with the force of a single 



Chap. XIX] the German language 189 

life, equally active at every point. A large proportion of the 
primary words are clearly onomatopoetic ; all are true transcripts 
of the meaning they represent. From these the entire growth 
springs organically, by necessary and universal analogies included 
in the general life. No part is separate and dead. The entire 
sj^stem teems with vitality. The breathing freshness of nature is 
felt throughout the whole. 

In the French language, an unnatural divorce has been effected, 
between the upper and lower regions of thought. They are not 
bound together by the presence of a common life. The language 
of literature and polite society does not grow forth from that which 
fills the mouths of the common people. It forms a caste within 
itself. A multitude of perfectly honest words, in free use among 
the people, it is not permitted to touch, for fear of defilement, 
simply because they are thus current. In return, to the people it 
is always itself more or less unintelligible, besides being made to 
suffer very seriously in point of ease and freedom. In the German 
no such separation holds. The language of the school and the 
court, only in a more cultivated form, is the language of the most 
common walks of life. No honest word is frowned out of good com- 
pany, simply because it is in use among the rabble. Thus an active 
communion is continually maintained between the literature and 
the general spirit of the nation. The first proceeds directly from 
the second, and draws fresh life from it perpetually, as the leaves 
and blossoms of the tree from the limbs, by which they communi- 
cate with the trunk. Hence the language of the educated class is 
intelligible to those who have no education. Even new words, for 
the most part, present no difficulty. The manner of their formation 
reveals their sense. 

The constitution of the German gives it unusual depth and force. 
Only where the language is the living product of life, in all its 
parts, can it be possessed of these qualities. The French has no 
depth and no force. It plays perpetually, with light and graceful 
movement, on the surface of the soul. In mere mechanical precis- 
ion, it may not be easily excelled, but for representing the deep 
forces of the spirit, it is to a great extent destitute of power. Not 
so the German. Here every word is instinct with the general life. 
It is felt, not as an abstraction or isolated sign, but as a living 
element in the midst of living relations. The process, by which 
mind has risen from lower to higher forms of thought, is still pre- 
served in the language itself. Words represent the inward consti- 
tution of thoughts. 



190 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

How much is gained by this for inwardness and strength may 
appear, if we consider to what extent a nervous style is promoted, 
in the English language, by the use of Saxon words in preference 
to such as are of foreign origin. Such words root themselves 
directly in the general life of the language, and are felt accordingly 
in their living force as commensurate with the inmost nature of the 
things the}" are made to represent. In proportion as these prevail 
in the style of a writer, it will be pure and full strong; while high 
sounding periods, made up of terms from the Latin, after the man- 
ner of Johnson, will be found in comparison watery and weak. 
Much of the force of our English translation of the Bible lies in its 
predominant use of words of Saxon growth. To change its style 
in this respect, would be to despoil it in a great measure of its 
gloiy. Of this any one can be satisfied, who will take the trouble 
to substitute almost saiy where terms derived from the Latin for 
the Saxon forms of the text. The Latin may sound larger, but it 
will mean less, and can never have the same life. 

It is a great advantage, in the case of the English, as compared 
for instance with the Italian or the French, that it includes in its 
composition so large a body of this home material. Here mainly 
we have the source of its freshness and strength. But the adA'ant- 
age which belongs to the German, in the same view, is vastfv greater. 
Here all is home growth and home manufacture. Roots, combina- 
tions and derived forms, are all alike the product of the same soil. 
Words are transparent with the life they enshrine. Thoughts move 
and speak in the sounds, by which they are rendered concrete. 
They are felt from their innermost ground outwards and upwards. 
The whole language is a stream of living water, perpetually spring- 
ing, free, vigorous and fresh, from the same deep birth-place in the 
bowels of the earth. No modern tongue can compare with it in 
this respect. 

As the German is deep, so it is uncommonly free and flexible. 
The French, with all its flippanc}' of movement, can boast of no 
such freedom. Its liberty at best is like the aptness of a dancing 
master, in making bows and showing off postures. In the very 
nature of the language, it must alwaj^s be spiritually stiff and 
starched. Full evidence of this is presented in the fact, that it is 
acknowledged to be so difficult to make translations into the French 
from other languages. This is the true test of freedom. French 
translations are generally loose paraphrastic versions, in which the 
spirit of the original is in a great measure sacrificed entirely. Vol- 
taire went so far indeed as to sa}-, that whatever could not be trans- 



Chap. XIX] the German language 191 

kited into French must be pronounced destitute of literary merit — 
making his own language the absolute measure of good taste for 
the whole world; and it has been quite fashionable in France, ac- 
cordingly, to undervalue in particular the classic monuments of the 
Grecian mind, as refusing to suit themselves to the Procrustean 
judgment of the " Grand Nation." All this is abundantly self-com- 
placent. The world, however, is not likely soon to succumb to the 
maxim, that the capabilities of the French tongue form the ne plus 
ultra of spiritual progress for the human mind. On the contrary, 
that Homer and Plato should become so insipid when they are made 
to utter themselves in French, will be taken rather as good proof 
that the language itself is superficial and jejune. Tried by the same 
general test, the German will be found as free as its Gallic rival is 
mechanical and stiff. No tongue can well be more supple, more 
ready to yield to the plastic force of thought, under whatever form 
it may be required to give it body and living motion. . It has all 
the spiritual flexibility of the ancient Greek. Hence it admits 
translations from all other languages, with extraordinary freedom. 
To translate French into German creates not the slightest difficulty ; 
but to translate German into French is often utterly impossible ; 
such want of commensurability is there between the two tongues, 
the one being so much more universal than the other. The ancient 
classics, Latin and Greek, are made to speak in German, as in no 
tongue besides but their own. Not only are their thoughts trans- 
lated, but their form and coloring are retained with the most 
graphic fidelity. Toss, in his translations of Hesiod and Homer 
from the Greek, and of Horace and Yirgil from the Latin, carries 
this fidelity so far, as to give his originals verse for verse, with full 
transcript of measure, movement and complexion, from beginning 
to end. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of such a method, 
we may well admire the resources of the language which could at 
all allow its use. It were a perfectly wild design, to attempt a 
similar work in any other modern tongue. No people have such 
translations as the Germans. 

The flexibility of the language is strikingly illustrated again, in 
the freedom with which every original writer causes it to take the 
particular conformation of his own mind. In all languages, dif- 
ferent writers make use to some extent of different styles. But in 
the German, this liberty has almost no limits. Every great genius 
creates it, as it were, into a new world, for his own use. Whatever 
may be the form under which the spirit of the nation may individ- 
ualize itself, the language at once shapes itself accordingly, and 



192 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

becomes a commensurate concrete image of its very life. The lan- 
guage of Goethe is wholl} T his own, the very transcript of his clear, 
transparent, many-sided mind. And what language under heaven 
save the German, we may ask, could have allowed free scope to the 
inward life of Jean Paul, as it now sports with leviathan strength, 
free and untrammelled, in its native element. Such a spirit im- 
prisoned in the meagre forms of French, might have floundered in 
vain in trying to make itself room, till it should have worn itself 
out with the effort. It might have been worthy of notice, in such 
case, under some other form, but it could not have been Jean Paul. 

We have been contemplating thus far simply the German lan- 
guage itself, as it holds in its natural constitution. As a primitive 
tongue having its life wholly within itself, we have found it to be 
distinguished for fulness, vitality, depth, inwardness, strength and 
freedom. But in all this, it is only the mirror of the German mind, 
with which we communicate by its means. This is, too, character- 
istically- free and strong. It is inward, full and deep — the very 
home of poetr}^ and philosophy, in their most spiritual form. 
Acquaintance with it should be considered a privilege, and can 
hardly fail to be attended with important benefit, when wisely culti- 
vated. Of all the different spheres of thought and feeling which 
make up the life of the modern world, there is surely not one more 
worth} 1 - of being penetrated and understood. France, Spain, Italy, 
may have brighter and softer skies ; but the life of the soul belongs 
emphatically to Germany. Under no French, Spanish or Italian 
form, is it exhibited with the same deep, full freshness and power. 
Independently altogether of its productions, in a literary point of 
view, such a life ruay be expected to have a salutarj- educational 
influence, wherever the force of it is felt. Communion with it will 
be awakening and invigorating. But to commune with the German 
mind, we must make ourselves familiar with the German language. 
We cannot understand it simply by translation or report. 

I might go on to speak of the broad fields of learning, to which 
access is had b} r a knowledge of the German tongue. Germany is 
the land emphatically of books. In no part of the world are the 
sciences cultivated with greater diligence or success. Nowhere is 
literature more entirely at home. Nowhere are the depths of philos- 
ophy more thoroughl}- explored. All this might be urged, in re- 
commendation of the language, as the key by which those stores of 
knowledge are to be unlocked. But my limits will not permit me 
to dwell on this particularly now. Let it be sufficient to say, that 
a knowledge of the German, under the view now mentioned, has 



Chap. XIX] the German language 193 

come to be regarded, both in England and in this country, as almost 
indispensable to thorough scholarship, in any profession. 

It is true indeed that the literature of Germany includes a vast 
amount of impiet}^ and nonsense. Its influence in many respects 
is to be deprecated, as dangerous to religion. Insidious forms of 
error, mysticism, transcendentalism, pantheism, and all sorts of 
rationalism, are wrought more or less into its very texture, and 
twine themselves around it in every direction. But all this cannot 
annihilate its worth, in other respects ; nor is it a sufficient reason 
for cutting ourselves off absolutely from the vast body of vigorous 
living thought, which with all its errors it is found to embrace. It 
is however most certainly a good reason for great caution and 
jealousy, in the case of all who feel authorized to trust themselves 
on this enchanted ground. Much might be said on the whole sub- 
ject; but it cannot be prosecuted farther, with propriety, at the 
present time. 

The study of the German language may be recommended, as an 
important help for acquiring a full and thorough knowledge of the 
English. The two languages are intimately related, both in form 
and spirit. Both spring from the same Teutonic source — since it 
is to Saxon properly the English owes its constitution and life. 
The English, indeed, is not so entirely primitive as the German in 
its structure. It has appropriated no small amount of material of 
foreign growth. But still it is no such jumble of heterogeneous 
elements as the Italian or the French. It bears a much closer re- 
semblance, in its constitution, to the German. The original Saxon 
life still pervades all its parts. It exhibits a Saxon bocry and a 
Saxon soul. Hence innumerable affinities hold between it and the 
German. The study of the one language sheds light perpetually 
on the other. In this view, the German has far greater claims upon 
our regard than the French, Spanish or Italian. It carries us 
directly back to the fountains of our own life, as involved in the 
general life with which we are surrounded. It tends to give us a 
better knowledge and a more full possession of our proper spiritual 
being. We cannot make ourselves at home in it, without being- 
better prepared so far to understand the true spirit of the English. 
To study the German is in our case to study the English at the 
same time. 

Such in a general way are the grounds on which the language 
of Germany may be recommended to our attention and respect. It 
is a strange illustration of the blindness of fashion, in the case of 
the most important interests, that both in England and in this 



194 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

country, the French should so generally form an object of promi- 
nent concern in what is called a polite education, while the German 
is not only overlooked but treated it maj' be with absolute scorn. 
Fashionable families are willing to pa)' handsomely to have their 
children taught to smatter phrases in the first, but would scarce con- 
sider it an accomplishment at all to have them thoroughly at home 
in the second. And yet, for all educational ends, the German is 
vastly to be preferred to the French. In its very constitution and 
structure, it is fitted to unfold the powers of the youthful spirit, to 
widen the sphere of its life, to invigorate its perceptions, to spirit- 
ualize its feelings, and to fill it with the rich deep poetry of nature. 
The French, on the contrary, is constitutionally poor, and dry, and 
lean. Its structure is mechanical. No fresh vigorous life breathes 
through its artificial forms. To commune with it, is to turn the 
back on the world of poetry and song. Its poetry has been not 
unaptly denominated "circumcised prose." The spirit of the lan- 
guage is cold and barren. It has no soul, no Gemueth, as it is 
stjded among the Germans. So entirely is this wanting, that no 
French word can be found to express the idea. And this is the 
language, which, above all others, English taste Las selected to be 
the instrument of cultivation for the 3-outhful heart! For my own 
part, I consider the time bestowed upon French in this country as 
almost entirely thrown away — about as much so as if it were 
expended in the study of the Cherokee. As a passport to French 
learning, in the case of literary men, it is all well enough. But as 
an educational discipline, or a polite accomplishment, it is worth 
almost nothing; and to make the matter still worse, it is the name 
only for the most part — the mere shadow of a shade — that is made 
to stand in our boarding schools and fashionable circles for the 
thing. 

The German is generally counted a more rude language than the 
French. Its movements seem to be awkward and unwieldly. It is 
considered deficient in sound, rough and unmusical rather than 
polite. We nnvv say, however, that the smoothness and lightness 
of the French and Italian are the result of a one-sided development 
of life in their case. A full free life can be brought out only by a 
full free use of the voice, on all sides and at all points. The German 
has its grace and harmonj' too, only there must be depth and earn- 
estness in the soul in order that they nnvv be felt. Nature often 
seems rude and awkward in comparison with art. But let the 
observation become sufficient^ deep, and how triumphantly is the 
comparison reversed. There is more harm 0113' in the mountains, 



Chap. XIXJ the German language 195 

valleys and resplendent rivers, than there is in the measured walks 
and piles of architecture, that make up the idea of a city. The 
storm itself is full of a deep living music, which the smooth 
pageantry of courts can never reach. 

It has been no uncommon thing, however, for Germans to be 
ashamed of their own language, as contrasting awkwardly to their 
feelings with the more mercurial spirit of other tongues. Thus at 
one time it seemed in danger, even in Germany itself, of succumb- 
ing completely to the arrogant pretensions of the French ; such was 
the rage that prevailed for writing, talking and playing the fool, in 
this gay language. So it is quite common for the descendants of 
Germans in this count ly, in the midst of English manners and feel- 
ings, to have a low esteem for the language of their fathers. Some 
such seem to make a merit of having as little to do with it as pos- 
sible. It puts them out of countenance, to have it supposed that 
they can speak or understand a word of German. Such persons 
are to be pitied for their narrow order of thinking. The German 
is not a language of which any one need be ashamed. True, it does 
not generally appear in its holiday dress in this country. It is for 
the most part barbarously spoken. But. there is no good reason 
why it should be undervalued or slighted on this account. It is 
barbarously spoken in some sections of Germany too. Provincial 
distortions, however, do not overthrow the language itself, nor 
destroy its title to respect. Let it be honored for what it is in its 
true form, and studied accordingly. Those especially, who have 
German blood in their veins, should consider it an accomplishment 
under any circumstances, to be able to read and speak the German 
tongue. In such a college as ours, it should be an object of general 
regard and general study. 

But if the language be worth j T of this general attention in the 
case of our students, it must be acknowledged to have special claims 
on those who are -here as candidates for the sacred ministry, in the 
bosom of the German Churches. The time will come, no doubt, 
when the German will not be needed at all for pastoral purposes, 
in our pulpits or out of them. But that time most clearly has not 
come yet. For many years the German will be extensively required. 
What the Church needs mainly, at this moment, is men qualified to 
preach in the German language. Even where the English has come 
to be generally used, there is still room, to say no more, at most 
points, for doing good also by means of the German, if not in the 
pulpit, at least out of it in the work of pastoral visitation; while 
over a wide territory, full of promise for the Church, the minister 



196 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

without it can have no free access at all publicly or privately to 
the body of the people. In these circumstances, it might seem to 
be a plain case that candidates for the ministry, as a general thing, 
in the German Reformed Church, should, with their other prepara- 
tion, take pains to make themselves in some degree familiar with 
the German language. There are points where it is not absolutely 
needed. A man nnvy be useful in the Church without it. But still 
it may be said to enter into the general idea of a preparation for 
this field. Other things being equal, the candidate who has a 
knowledge of the German is more fully fitted for service in the 
ministry of the Reformed Church, and has a better prospect of use- 
fulness than one who is destitude of this advantage. ISow this 
should of itself in a general view bind our candidates for the min- 
istiy to cultivate an acquaintance with the language. Such are to 
be ambitious of being as fully fitted as possible for usefulness. 
Were they called to some foreign field, the} 7 would calculate, as a 
matter of course, on mastering a new language, or perhaps two or 
three of them, as necessaiy to success in their mission. And if a 
knowledge of the German be in itself an enlargement of a man's 
qualifications for usefulness in the ministry, why should they not 
be stimulated in like manner, under the prospect of entering this 
field, to make the accomplishment their own. The duty of every 
candidate for the sacred office is to covet earnestly all gifts, within 
his reach, that may be made available for the success of his minis- 
try; to "seek that he may excel, to the edifying of the Church." 
On this principle, in the case before us, students who have it in 
view to enter the ministry of a German Church should be ex- 
horted to cultivate the gift of speaking German. Those who have 
had any knowledge of it previously, however small, should feel 
specially bound to improve the advantage, by making it the ground 
of a knowledge that may be more full and accurate. The} 7 should 
stir up the gift that is in them, and not allow it to perish for want 
of cultivation. And those who have no such previous advantage 
at all, should not look on it as a very formidable undertaking to 
learn the language, out and out, in the course of their other prep- 
aration for the office they are seeking. Any student of tolerable 
capacity, penetrated with a sense of the importance of the German, 
and seriously bent on making himself as fully as possible "meet for 
the Master's use," in the seven or eight years which he ought to 
spend in preparing himself to be a preacher, might easily add this 
to his other accomplishments. And why should it not be expected 
at his hands. Even if the language has no other value whatever, 



Chap. XIX] the German language 197 

it would be reason enough for him to study it, that it was called 
for, as a help to his usefulness, on his contemplated field of service 
in the Church. He might cheerfully address himself, under the in- 
fluence of this consideration, to the study of the purest language 
that is spoken. With how much greater alacrity then should he 
respond to the challenge, when it calls him to study the German — 
one of the richest languages in the world, which he might well 
count it a privilege to make his own, apart from the particular con- 
sideration now in view altogether. 



CHAPTER XX 

A FTER the death of Dr. Ranch, Dr. Xevin, by general request. 
-£A- became President of the College pro tempore, which, con- 
trary to the fears of its friends, continued to grow and prosper ; in 
fact, it entered upon a new career of prosperity. The contribu- 
tions for its relief during the Centennial year removed it above 
pressing financial difficulties ; the faculty was sufficiently full, in- 
cluding four professors, complemented always by two or three ad- 
junct-professors or tutors. Dr. Xevin took charge of the classes 
at the chapter or place in the book where Dr. Rauch had left 
off teaching, and showed that he had the ability to lead the stu- 
dents over the philosophic field, in the spirit of their revered in- 
structor who had fallen asleep, to study the phenomena of the 
spirit in a higher realm. In the Seminary all the branches of a 
theological course were taught ably and thoroughly, but this in- 
volved many and onerous duties for one professor, single-handed 
and alone, to discharge. The}' were performed noiselessly and 
without complaint, although largely increased by frequent contri- 
butions to the public press, which the circumstances and environ- 
ments of the professor at the time seemed to require from his pen. 
But it was not very long before it began to be felt that he needed 
assistance in his work. On one occasion, after a day of fasting, 
he felt back unconscious from his seat at the table in a syncope of 
the heart, and it was some time before he rallied and regained his 
usual strength. It was a mere incident at the time, yet it hastened 
thought and reflection on the part of the friends of the institutions. 
Had Dr. Xevin, upon whom so much rested, been removed by 
death at that time, it would have been a greater loss to all the in- 
terests concerned than was the death of Dr. Rauch sometime be- 
fore. But where was the man to be found who was to stand by his 
side in the Seminary? It was difficult to say. It must be one who 
possessed gifts, and qualifications of a special kind. Such ques- 
tions are sometimes answered by an inspiration that does not seem 
to be based on an}' large amount of cool reflection. And so it 
turned out in this instance. A voice came from the English por- 
tion of the Church — again from the Chassis of Maryland — that the 
man for the place should be Dr. Krummacher, the great pulpit ora- 
tor of Germany, favorably known in this country as the author of 

(198) 



Chap. XX] dr. krummacher called 199 

Elijah the Tishbite,and everywhere highly respected for his learning 
and evangelical faith. The choice was generally commended, and 
the name itself helped to add enthusiasm to the movement. The 
more considerate ones doubted whether the distinguished preacher 
could be induced to leave his field of usefulness at home, or whether, 
even if he should decide to cross the ocean, it would be wise for 
him at his advanced age to do so. Dr. Nevin was one who 'thought 
in this way, but he encouraged the movement with his pen. It 
looked as if Providence was in it ; and it was clear that, if Dr. 
Krummacher could not be secured, there were other or }^ounger 
theologians in German}^ from whom a choice could be made. A 
special meeting of the Synod, therefore, was held to act on the Ger- 
man professorship at Lebanon, Pa., in January, 1843, in the same 
month and during the same week in which the English professor 
in the Seminary had been elected three years before. A letter from 
Dr. Nevin addressed to the Sj-nod was read at this meeting, in 
which the gravity of the situation and the importance of the step 
about to be taken were fully discussed, and the election of Dr. 
Krummacher urged as a necessity in the circumstances. 

During the second day of the session, the engrossing subject 
which had called the Sj 7 nod together in mid-winter was earnestly 
considered in connection with Dr. Nevin 's letter, which had made 
a deep impression and was listened to with solemn interest. At 
the opening of the afternoon session the Synod was led in prayer 
in the German language by the Rev. Henry Bibighouse and in the 
English by Dr. Bernard C. Wolff. At the time appointed for filling 
the vacant professorship, the Synod was again led in prayer by the 
President, and the election resulted in the unanimous choice of the 
Rev. Frederick William Krummacher, D.D., of Elberfeld, Germany. 
The call to the Professor-elect was immediately prepared, his salary 
fixed, and commissioners consisting of Rev. Theodore L. Hoffeditz, 
D.D., and Rev. Benjamin S. Schneck were appointed to proceed to 
Germany to convey the call in person to Dr. Krummacher. All 
this was clone in the fear of God and in the exercise of faith, with- 
out any special reference to the treasury of the Seminary, which at 
this time was scarcely able to meet its current expenses. 

But after the act was consummated, some of the business men 
present, elders, began to inquire how the increased expenditure in 
the Seminary was to be met, and learning the situation of affairs, 
they commenced to make their contributions for the endowment of 
the new professorship. In those days, however, an effort of that 
kind required time and progressed slowly. The Commissioners, 



200 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

after securing their credentials and making preparations for their 
voyage to Europe in the spring, found themselves embarrassed by 
an empt}^ treasury, and began to think that for appearance's sake, 
at least, they had better remain at home. Bat the dilemma was 
explained to a plain wealthy German farmer living in Oley town- 
ship, Berks Co., Pa., Elder Daniel Xieffer, who urged the brethren 
to prosecute the object of their appointment, and promised to leave 
$10,000 for the support of the German professor (which he after- 
wards increased to $15,000) in his will. He was advanced in years, 
and armed with such a promise the commissioners embarked for 
Europe in the month of May. It was now more evident than ever 
before that the hand of Providence was in this movement, as sub- 
sequent events demonstrated still more fully. 

Dr. Krummacher was much exercised by this unexpected call to 
labor in America, and as there seemed to be something remarkable 
about it, he gave it a careful and prolonged consideration. The 
conclusion arrived at was that he ought to continue his ministry 
in Germany, in which his friends at home and in this country coin- 
cided. As an evangelical preacher, as a great pulpit orator, he was 
needed where he was in upholding the faith of the Gospel against 
the subtle attacks of neology and wide spread unbelief. In this 
country his influence would have no doubt been salutary, but his 
field would have been much more limited and his scholastic work 
probably somewhat oppressive to him. His proper sphere was the 
pulpit, not the professorial chair. His call to this country, singu- 
larly void of calculation from the time it was proposed, was, how- 
ever, an interesting episode in his life. By his books and his high 
reputation, he was to some extent unconsciously the means of ini- 
tiating a movement by which a German professor was transplanted 
to this country, through whom an impulse was imparted to theolog- 
ical science which is felt to the present day, not only in his own de- 
nomination but in others as well. 

By the recommendations of such theologians as Neander, Tho- 
luck, Hengstenberg, and Julius Mueller, Dr. Philip Schaff was se- 
lected to take the position offered to Dr. Krummacher. He was 
just beginning his career as a theological lecturer in the University 
of Berlin, had already distinguished himself by the publication of 
several learned brochures, was still young, a Swiss and a repub- 
lican by birth, an orthodox Calvinist in his faith, and an interesting 
pulpit orator. A better or more suitable selection for the position 
at Mercersburg perhaps could not have been made. He was a gift 
from the fatherland to the daughter Church on this side of the 



Chap. XX] dr. schaff's reception 201 

ocean, and we may add, to the country at large, destined to serve * 
as an important link connecting the theological science of this coun- 
try with that of Germany. 

Dr. Schaff, supplied with the testimonials of the German theolo- 
gians already mentioned, was formally elected by the Synod in the 
fall of 1843 to fill the chair of Church History and Biblical Litera- 
ture in the Seminaiy, and he arrived in this country in the summer 
of 1844. His reception on his arrival at Mercersburg was of a 
highly flattering character, and must have taken him by surprise. 
In the evening the students and citizens, with a band of music, 
met him in the suburbs of the town, and conducted him in a torch- 
light procession to the Seminary building, where he was welcomed, 
to his new sphere of labor in English and German addresses, by 
representatives from the College and the Seminary. With the 
music of the band, the illuminations of the Seminary and many 
other buildings in the town, festoons and triumphal arches, the 
scene was highly imposing. The object of such a reception was to> 
make it conform as far as possible to similar demonstrations made 
by the students in Germany — a genuine Fackelzug — on occasions 
wlien distinguished scholars were called to enter upon their duties 
in the Universities as professors. The American students therefore 
entered into it with much vim. Under this view it was successful, 
honorable to all concerned, and altogether in keeping with the 
Anglo-German character of the institution. Dr. Schaff said that 
for the moment he felt as if he were still in Germany. He soon 
found himself at home among warm friends in a land of strangers. 
What was especially gratifying to him and very bracing to his 
nerves, no doubt, was the fact that he at once found that Dr. Neviiii 
was in intelligent sympathy with German theology. Thus he found 
a colleague and friend upon whom, as Dr. Rauch had done before, 
he could rely for comfort and support. He accordingly entered 
upon his duties in the Seminary without delay, and set himself to 
work to prepare his famous Inaugural Address. 

At first he was at a loss to find out what its particular character 
ought to be. He might have prepared an introductory address, 
such as in ordinary circumstances would have been regarded as 
appropriate and sufficient for the occasion. But as he had come 
to this country from the famous centre of theological learning at 
Berlin, and would naturally be regarded as in some sense a repre- 
sentative and exponent of German theology in America, he felt 
that he ought to define his position more or less fully as a German 
divine. This much might be reasonably expected of him, and es- 
13 



202 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

pecially so, in view of the fact that German theology at that time 
was not eve^where in this country in very high repute. For the 
most part it was regarded with grave suspicion in our highest seats 
of learning as well as by the religious press generally. It was 
therefore thought best that he should be allowed full freedom to 
give expression to his theological views on some one of the great 
questions of the day, from his own evangelical German stand-point ; 
and in this he was encouraged, and no doubt abundantly stimulated 
by his new friend, Dr. Xevin. The result was a theological treatise 
of considerable length on " The Principle of Protestantism as 
related to the Present State of the Church," or in other words, 
a contribution to the solution of the Church Question, which was 
then looming up as the great problem of the age. 

At his installation into office at Reading, Pa., in October, 1844, 
Dr. Schaff could read only portions of the address, little more than 
its introduction, or a general synopsis of its contents. It was, how- 
ever, in due season, translated into the English language, and in- 
troduced to the American public during the spring of 1845, with an 
admirable introduction by his colleague. As Dr. Schaff had quoted 
largely in the body of his work from Dr. Xevin's Sermon on Catho- 
lic Unit}", delivered at the Triennial Convention of the Dutch and 
German Reformed Churches at Harrisburg on the 8th of August, 
1844, at his request the sermon was published as an Appendix to 
the so-called Inaugural Address. The original work, as thus en- 
larged, formed a volume of 215 pages. 

A production of this na.ture launched upon the theological pub- 
lic, at that particular time, was somewhat meteoric, and needed 
just such an explanation as Dr. Nevin gave it in his Introduction. 
The translation was admirable, in as smooth and pure English as 
could be desired; but the method, the character of its arguments, 
its thoughts and its inbreathing spirit remained nevertheless invin- 
cibly German; and yet, notwithstanding the honesty beaming in 
its face, its natural character was just the feature which was calcu- 
lated to excite doubt and suspicion in the minds of many. As 
already said, there was at the time considerable zeal arrayed against 
German thinking as characteristically bad, both philosophically and 
theologically, and there were some very excellent men, in their wajr, 
who, perhaps, would have kept it from crossing the ocean alto- 
gether, if it had been in their power. Dr. Nevin, himself, had once 
been of this way of thinking, but he had advanced somewhat in 
knowledge, and was now of a different mind. He had arrived at 
the conclusion that it was an immense mistake to assume that the 



Chap. XX] the principle of protestantism 203 

Anglo-American order of religions life was all right and complete 
in itself, whilst the German life under the same aspect was all 
wrong. It might be supposed that both include distinctive quali- 
ties of the highest order, and that standing by themselves they 
were, more or less, one-sided, involving corresponding defects and 
false tendencies. Sound reason and ordinary common sense, there- 
fore, would say that there should be a judicious union of both, in 
which what is truly good in each should find its proper supple- 
ment in what is true and good in the other, and that in this way 
both extremes should be mutually corrected and reciprocally re- 
strained. In all such cases the truth can be held only in their 
union. So much at least had to be said in the way of an apology 
for the introduction of German theology into this country forty or 
fifty years ago ; but there surety ought not to have been anything 
of the kind necessary in the case of Professor Schaff. He cer- 
tainly needed no apology for appearing before the American public. 
He came to this country not in ai^ way to interfere with the order 
of life already established, but in obedience to a call of Providence 
to labor for a German people and a German Church, which needed 
his services ; and if his Christian activity, outside of his own more 
immediate circle of German people, should prove to be useful it 
would only be so much the better. 

But the Inaugural, quite naturally, served to awaken distrust and 
suspicion, not so much by its German source and costume, as by 
its thoughts or contents. In Germany these would have met with 
favor b}^ orthodox theologians generally, and scarcely been regarded 
in any way as forming a new departure. They proceeded from the 
school of Neander, with indications here and there of a higher tone 
of orthodoxy. In this country, however, they were comparatively 
new, and running counter to popular views of the Church and his- 
tory in general, they were of such a character as to arouse opposi- 
tion, and were liable to be misunderstood or misrepresented. Dr. 
Nevin in his gentle, apologetic Introduction, therefore, endeavored 
to disarm prejudice and to prepare the reader for a candid and lib- 
eral perusal of the Inaugural, in which, however, he only partially 
succeeded. As the Address was the starting point of the contro- 
versies in which he took such a prominent part, and was, in fact, a 
magna pars, it seems proper that we should furnish the readers with 
some intelligible account of the drift and animus of the book. 

Its title was the Principle of Protestailism, which the author 
found in the doctrine of justification by faith on the one hand and 
in the supreme authority of the Scriptures as the rule of faith on 



204 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. VIII 

the other. These two, the former represented more prominently 
by the Lutheran and the latter by the Reformed Chnrch, are in- 
separable and constitute together only one fons et origo, only dif- 
ferent aspects of one and the same principle. But the book covers 
a much wider ground than its title at first view would suggest. It 
is in fact a vindication of the Protestant movement as a whole, ad- 
mits its defects and weakness, and seeks to point out the course it 
should pursue in order to outgrow its present limitations and pass 
over into something higher and better, carrying with it, into a new 
order of things in the future, all that is valuable and true in it now. 
It was not a religious Revolution in the sixteenth century as some 
would have it, nor a mere Restoration of ancient Christianity as 
other friends would like to regard it. It was, as the name applied 
to it expresses, a Reformation ; not such a violent break with the 
histoiy that went before as some imagine, but the ripe fruit of ages, 
the living result of their struggles and conflicts brought about b}~ 
a valid historical development, in which the human and divine fac- 
tors of history were equally active. The preparation for this great 
outcome of humanitj^ in its upward struggle was slowly made from 
century to centuiy in the several departments of politics, science, 
and polite literature, but more especially in Theology, in the 

f Church and in the religious life of the people. The Reformation 
abolished as far as it knew how the errors, the abuses, the super- 
stitions and the corruptions that had been the accumulations of 
ages, and held fast to the truths that had come down from the early 
and primitive Church as its own rightful inheritance. But, as al- 

' ready said, it was an advance in the history of the Church. It 
brought out more clearly than ever before the doctrine of salvation 
by grace, and of free access to the throne of the Father in heaven 
through His only begotten Son. The Church of the Middle Ages 
was the Church of the Latin race, and carried in it an element of 
legalism alwa} T s characteristic of that race, which stood in the way 
of the liberty of the individual and debarred him from the full en- 
joyment of the blessings of salvation in Christ. The Gospel in- 
volved in it freedom in the true sense of the term, and it became 
necessaiy that the Germanic people should be called on to embody 
it in the onward march of historj^. Protestantism or the Evangel- 
ical Church is the Christianity of the Germanic race. The latter 
is not a reconstruction of the Christian faith de novo, as is some- 
times affirmed, but the result of an historical process or develop- 
ment, alwa} T s existing in the Gospel and in the deeper life of the 
Church, but now brought out in the fullness of time as the flower and 



Chap. XX] the principle of protestantism 205 

the fruit of a long process of growth. Such in brief was Dr. Schaff's 
view of Church History and of the genesis of the Reformation. 

But when this is admitted it follows that Protestantism itself 
ought not to be regarded as the final and only perfect form of the 
Christian faith. It too must pass through a course of development 
until it reaches something higher and better. As it began to un- 
fold itself in the Christian life of Europe, it soon brought along 
with it diseases, tendencies destructive to its inner life in Rational- 
ism and Sectism which are the licentious abuses of Evangelical 
freedom. Puseyism, an important movement in its day, was a 
well-meant attempt to save Protestantism from the dissolution that 
threatened it in the disintegrating tendencies at work within its 
pale, but insufficient to work a lasting cure for these diseases. It 
looked backwards not forwards. It was restoration, repristination, 
not reformation. The only true stand-point, therefore, according 
to Dr. Schaff, for the farther progress of Protestantism and of 
Christianity in general, is to be found in the principle of historical 
development, understood in a scriptural or evangelical sense. Un- 
der the Providence of God, it must be our guide out of the evils and 
difficulties of the present, and the door for such enlargement of 
Christian freedom as will lead finally to the union of all branches 
of the Christian Church, in one body, the prayer not only of such 
men as Moehler in the Catholic Church, but of all true Christians. 

The Inaugural does not pretend to say what particular form the 
Christianity of the future is to be, or how it is to be distinguished, 
except that it will manifest a higher degree of unity than it does in 
its present interimistic period ; but it regards with favor the specu- 
lations of the philosopher Schelling, as he advanced them in the ' 
latter part of his career in his famous lectures at the University of 
Berlin. Historical Christianity was at first Petrine, from Peter, 
the apostle of the Father, deriving its form from the principle of 
law and authority and ending in Popery ; at the Reformation it be- 
came Pauline, from Paul the apostle of the Son, the representative 
of freedom, of progress and enlargement; but in the future it is 
destined to become Johannean, in which the antagonisms and an- 
titheses of the preceding periods will be reconciled in one Holy 
Catholic Church of love mirrored forth already in the life and writ- 
ings of John, the Apostle of the Holy Ghost, who lay on Jesus' 
breast at the first Lord's Supper and was the disciple whom he 
loved. If such should be the ordering of Providence, then we may 
expect that the reign of charit}^ will become wider and stronger 
among Christians, just as it should be. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE Inaugural closes with a formal summary, consisting of 112 
propositions or theses, supposed to be suitable for the time. 
The}' lie back of the Address, but the} r go bej-ond it in their range, 
and form, moreover, a short treatise on speculative theology, a vol- 
ume in fact, all in a brief space. The}' were quite as practical in their 
day as thej' were speculative. As the}' lay, more or less, at the 
foundation of the theological movement that took its rise at Mer- 
cersburg, we here present them to the reader, somewhat abbrevi- 
ated, but without any material omissions, in order to supplement 
our short and imperfect sketch of the Address itself: 

Every period of the Church and Theology has its particular 
problem to solve, and the main question of our time is concerning 
the nature of the Church itself in its relation to the world and 
individual Christians. 

The Church is the Body of Christ ; an institution founded by 
Christ Himself, proceeding from His loins, and anointed by His 
spirit, for the glory of God and the salvation of man ; and the 
necessaiy organ through which the revelation of God in Christ 
becomes effective in the world's history, beyond which, as there is 
no Christianity, there can be no salvation. 

At the same time she is like everybody or organism, a living 
unity of different members ; a communion of faith and love, visible 
as well as invisible, external as well as internal, of the most mani- 
fold individualities, gifts and powers, pervaded by the same spirit 
and serving the same end ; and, therefore, the depository and con- 
tinuation of the earthly human life of the Redeemer in his three- 
fold offices of Prophet, Priest and King. 

Hence, like her founder, she possesses a divine and a human, an 
ideal and a real, a heaven^ and an earthly nature, possessing only 
the principle of holiness and the full truth, mixed, however, still 
with sin and error. 

It is the .mission of the Church to purify the world in its different 
spheres of Science, Art, Government, and Social life, with the puri- 
fying power of her own divine life ; to formally organize it as the 
Kingdom of God; which must invoke the absolute identity of 
Church and State, Theology and Philosophy, Worship and Art, 
Religion and Morality; and to renovate the whole earth, in which 

(206) 



Chap. XXI] theses for the time 20*1 

Christianity shall become completely the same with humanity, and 
God Himself shall be All in all. 

The Church is the Mother of believers from whom they derive 
their religious life, and to whom they owe constant fidelity, gratitude 
and obedience. She is the power of the objective and general, to 
which the subjective and particular should ever be subordinate. 
It is only in such rational subordination that the individual can be 
free. Apart from communion with the life of the Church, he is 
like a limb separated from the body, or a branch torn from the vine. 

Christianity in itself is the absolute religion, which admits of no 
improvement ; but its subjective apprehension and appropriation 
by the minds of men undergo a process of development which will 
become complete only at the coming of the Lord. 

The Church may be in possession of a truth, long before it be- 
comes conscious of it, or is able to define it. So it was, for in- 
stance, with the doctrine of the Trinity before the time of Atha- 
nasius,with the doctrine of human freedom and divine grace before 
Augustine, and with the evangelical doctrine of justification by 
faith previous to the Reformation. 

The idea unfolded in profound style more particularly b}^ the 
later German Philosophy that history involves a continual progress 
towards something better by means of dialectic antitheses, (Gegen- 
saetze), is substantially true and correct, provided we recognize 
in such conflicts a corresponding movement of evil also towards 
that which is worse. The wheat and the tares grow together 
until the two developments shall become complete. 

In the Church, therefore, we must distinguish between idea and 
manifestation. As to the former she is complete ; as to the latter 
she is imperfect and must pass through different stages of life until 
the ideal actualized in Christ is actualized in humanity at large, 
and his body appears thus in the ripeness of complete manhood. 

Such a dialectic process or growth is attended with diseases 
and crises, theoretical in the form of heresies, and practical in the 
form of schisms. 

In the wise Providence of God all heresies and schisms are so 
overruled as to bring the Church to a clearer consciousness of her 
true vocation, a deeper apprehension of her faith, and a purer rev- 
elation of the power included in her life. 

The presence of disease in the body of Christ requires a reme- 
dial or creative process, not in violent Revolution or in conserva- 
tive Repristination, but in health-inspiring reformation. Protest- 
antism, consequently, in its proper sense, belongs indispensably to 



208 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

the life of the Church, as the reaction of her own proper vitality 
in opposition to the workings of disease lurking in her system. 

Protestantism runs through the entire history of the Church, and 
will continue to be active until she is purged from all impure ele- 
ments. The most grand and widely influential exhibition of Prot- 
estantism is presented to us in the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, leading to the formal constitution of the Evangelical 
Church, as originated and in its most deep inward and truly apos- 
tolic form, carried out and consummated by the German nation. 

It is a jejune and narrow conception of this event to look upon 
it simply as a restoration of the original state of the Church, or a 
renewal of Augustinism against the Pelagian sj'stem, by which it 
had been supplanted. Such a view proceeds on the fundamentally 
erroneous position, that the religious life revealed in the person of 
Christ primarily, and by derivation from Him in His Apostles, has 
been full}' actualized also from the beginning in the general mass 
of the Church. Rather, the Reformation must be viewed as an ac- 
tual advance of the religious life and consciousness of the Church, 
b}^ a deeper apprehension of God's word, be3 T ond all previous at- 
tainments of Christendom. 

But just as little must the Reformation be viewed as a revolu- 
tionary separation from the Catholic Church, holding connection 
at best, perhaps, with some fractionary sect of the Middle Ages, 
and only through this and the help of certain desperate historical 
leaps besides, reaching back to the age of the Apostles. 

Rather, the Reformation must be viewed as the greatest act of 
the Catholic Church itself, the full ripe fruit of all its better tenden- 
cies, particularly of the deep spiritual law conflicts of the Middle 
Period, which were as a schoolmaster towards the Protestant doc- 
trine of justification. 

The separation was produced, not by the will of the Reformers, 
but b} r the stiff-necked Papacy, which, like Judaism at the time of 
Christ, identifying itself in a fleshly way with the idea of the abso- 
lute Church, refused to admit the onward movement. 

Thus apprehended, Protestantism has as large an interest in the 
vast historical treasures of the previous period, as can be claimed 
rightfully by the Church of Rome. Hence the arguments drawn 
b}^ Romanists from this quarter, and particular^ from the Mid- 
dle Ages, the proper cradle of the Reformation, have no applica- 
tion against our stand-point. Equally false finally is the view, 
whether popular or philosophical, b} T which the Reformation is 
made to consist in the absolute emancipation of the Christian life, 



Chap. XXI] theses for the time 209 

subjectively considered from all Church authority, and the exalta- 
tion of private judgment to the papal throne. 

On the contrary, it is quite clear from history that the Reform- 
ers aimed only at such liberty of faith and conscience, and such in- 
dependence of private judgment as should involve an humble sub- 
jection of the natural will, which they held to be incapable of all 
good, to God's grace, and of the human reason to God's Word. In- 
deed their opposition to the Roman traditions was itself based on 
the conviction, that they were the product of such reason, sundered 
from the Divine Word. 

The material, or life principle of Protestantism, is the Doctrine 
of Justification by Grace alone, through the merits of Jesus Christ, 
by means of living faith; that is, the personal appropriation of 
Christ in the totality of the inner man. This does not overthrow 
good works ; rather, they are rightly called for and made possible 
only in this way ; with dependence, however, on faith, as being its 
necessary fruit, the subjective impression of the life of Christ, in 
opposition to Pelagianism, which places works parallel with faith, 
or even above it. 

The formal or knowledge principle of Protestantism is the suf- 
ficiency and unerring certainty of the Holy Scriptures as the only 
norm of saving knowledge. This does not overthrow the idea of 
Church tradition; but simply makes it dependent on the written 
word, as the stream is upon the fountain — the necessary, ever-deep- 
ening onward flow of the sense of Scripture itself, as it is carried 
forward in the consciousness of the Christian world; contrary to 
the Romish dogma, by which tradition, as the bearer of different 
contents altogether, is made co-ordinate with the Bible, or even 
exalted above it. 

These two principles, rightly apprehended, are only different mu- 
tually supplementary sides of one and the same principle, and their 
living interpenetration forms the criterion of orthodox Protestant- 
ism. 

Opposition to the Roman Catholic extreme, according to the 
general law of historical progress, led the Reformers to place the 
strongest emphasis on justification and faith, scripture and preach- 
ing; whence the possibility of a one-sided development, in which 
holiness and love, tradition and sacrament, might not be allowed to 
come to their full rights. 

Respect for the Reformation as a divine work in no way forbids 
the admission that it included some mixture of error and sin ; as 
where Gocl builds a church, the Devil erects a chapel by its side. 



210 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. Till 

In an}- view, however, the Reformation must be regarded as still 
incomplete. It needs yet its concluding act, to unite what has 
fallen asunder, to bring the subjective to a reconciliation with the 
objective. 

Puritanism may be considered a sort of second reformation, called 
forth by the reappearance of Romanizing elements in the Anglican 
Church, and as such forms the basis to a great extent of American 
Protestantism, particularly in Xew England. Its highest recommen- 
dation, bearing a divine signature, is presented in its deep practical 
earnestness as it regards religion, and its zeal for personal piety ; 
by which it has been more successful perhaps than any other section 
of the Church, for a time, in the work of saving individual souls. 

On the other hand, it falls far beyond the German Reformation by 
its revolutionary, unhistorical, and consequently unchurchly char- 
acter, and carries in itself no protection whatever against an indefi- 
nite subdivision of the Church into separate atomistic sects. For, 
having no proper conception of a historical development of Chris- 
tianity, and with its negative attitude of blind irrational zeal to- 
wards the past in its own rear, it may be said to have armed its 
children with the same right, and the same tendency too, to treat 
its authority with equal independence and contempt. 

Protestantism has formed the starting point and centre of all im- 
portant movements in the histoiy of the last three centuries, and 
constitutes now also the main interest of the time. 

The histoiy of Protestantism, in the sphere of Religion, Science, 
Art, and Government, especially since the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century, may be regarded as the development of the principle 
of subjectivity, the consciousness of freedom. 

In this development, however, it has gradually become estranged 
to a great extent from its own original nature, and fallen dialecti- 
cally into its opposite, according to the general course of histoiy. 
Its grand maladies at this time are Rationalism and Sectism. 

Sectism is one-sided practical religious subjectivism, and has 
found its classic soil within the territory of the Reformed Church, 
in the predominantly practical countries, England and America. 

Rationalism is one-sided theoretic religious subjectivism, and its 
fullest and most perfect exhibition has taken place accordingly in 
Germany, the land of theory and science, and in the bosom of the 
Lutheran Church. 

These two diseases stand in a relation to Protestantism, similar 
to that of the papacy to Catholicism in the Middle Ages ; that is, 
thev have a conditional historical necessity, and an outward con- 



Chap. XXI] theses for the time 211 

nection with the system to which they adhere, but nevertheless 
contradict and caricature its inmost nature. 

The secular interests, Science, Art, Government, and Social Life, 
have become since the Reformation dissociated from the Church, 
in whose service they stood, although with an unfree subjugation 
in the Middle Ages, and in this separate form are advanced to a 
high state of perfection. This, however, is a false position, since 
the Kingdom of God requires that all divinely constituted forms 
and spheres of life should be brought to serve Him in the most 
intimate alliance with religion, that God may be all in all. 

The orthodox Protestantism of the present day, although some- 
thing different from Rationalism and Sectarism in all other respects, 
is distinguished in common with them, particularly in this countiy, 
b} T the quality of a one-sided subjectivity, which, however, em- 
bodies in it at the same time a large amount of personal piet}^. Its 
great defect, therefore, is the want of an adequate conception of 
the nature of the Church and of its relation to the individual 
Christian on the one hand, and the general life of man on the other. 

Hence proceeds, first, indifference towards Sectarism, or at 
least denominational divisions which are at war with the idea of the 
Church as the Body of Christ. 

Secondly, a want of respect for history, and a disposition to fall 
back directly and wholly upon the Scriptures, without regard to 
the development of their contents in the life of the Church, as it 
stood from the beginning. 

Thirdry, an undervaluation of the Sacraments as objective in- 
stitutions of the Lord, independent of individual views and states. 

Fourthly, a disproportionate esteem for the service of preaching, 
with a corresponding sacrifice in the case of the Liturgy, the stand- 
ing objective part of divine worship, in which the whole congrega- 
tion is called to pour forth its religious life to God. 

And fifthly, a circumscribed conception of the all-pervading 
leaven-like nature of the Gospel, involving an abstract separation 
of religion from the divinely established order of the world in other 
spheres. 

To this must be added, in the case of a number of denominations, 
the fancy of their own perfection, an idea that their particular tradi- 
tional style of religion can never be improved into anything better, 
which is a rejection of the Protestant principle of mobilit}^ and 
progress, and a virtual relapse accordingly into the ground error of 
the Church of Rome. 

The stand-point and with it the wants of our time are wholly 



212 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844: [DlV. Till 

different from those of the sixteenth century. Our most immediate 
danger now is not from the Church of Rome, but from a one-sided 
subjectivism; in part heterodox and anti-christian, in part orthodox 
and pious, but always false, by which the rights of the Church are 
wronged in our midst. 

The redeeming tendency of the age, therefore, is not that which 
shall emancipate its subjectivity from the fetters of bondage, as at 
the time of the Reformation, but it is rather that which regards the 
claims of objectivity in the true idea of the Church. 

Not until Protestantism shall have repented of its own faults and 
healed its own wounds, may it expect to prevail finally over the 
Church of Rome. The fact that Popery has been enabled to make 
such formidable progress latterly, especially in England and the 
United States, may be regarded as a divine judgment, because Prot- 
estantism has in a great measure here neglected its duty. 

Puse3'ism, (with which of course we must not confound the 
spurious after-birth of fantastic hollow-hearted affectation, always 
to be expected in such a case), nun- be considered in its original in- 
tention and best tendency a well-meant, but insufficient and un- 
successful attempt to correct the ultra subjectivity of Protestantism. 

In this view we have reason to rejoice in its appearance, as indi- 
cating on the part of the Protestant world a waking consciousness 
of the malady under which it labors in this direction, and serving 
also to promote right church feeling. 

" By its reverence for Church antiquity, it exerts a salutary in- 
fluence against what nnry be considered as the reigning error of the 
times, a wild revolutionary zeal for liberty, coupled with a profane 
scorn of all that is holy in the experience of the past. 

So also its stress laid upon forms exhibits a wholesome reaction 
against the irrational hyper-spiritualism, so common among even 
the best Protestants, which the doctrine of the resurrection alone, 
as taught in the Bible, is enough to prove fallacious. 

Church forms serve two general purposes : First, the}' are for 
the lower stages of religious development conductors over into the 
life of the Spirit; secondly, they are for the Church at large the 
necessaiy utterances or corporealization of the spirit in the view in 
which (Etinger's remark holds good, that " Corporeity is the scope 
of God's icays." 

All turns simply on this, that the form be answerable to the con- 
tents, and be actuated by the Spirit. A formless spiritualism is no 
whit better than a spiritless or dead formalism. The only right 
condition is a sound spirit within a sound body. 



Chap. XXI] theses for the time 213 

The grand defect of Puse} r ism, on the other hand, is its un pro- 
tectant character, in not recognizing the importance of the Refor- 
mation, and the idea of progress in the life of the Church since. 

It is for this reason only half historical and half Catholic, since 
its sympathy and respect for the past life of the Church stop short 
with the sixteenth century. 

Its view of the Church altogether is outward and mechanical, 
excluding the conception of a living development through the suc- 
cessive periods of its history. 

This character appears particularly in its theory of the Episco- 
pal succession ; which is only a new form of the old Pharisaic Ju- 
daism and makes the apostolicity of the Church dependent on an 
historical inquiry (in the case of which, besides, no absolute cer- 
tainty is possible), resting it thus on a wholly precarious founda- 
tion. 

Puseyism then is to be regarded as nothing more than a simple 
reaction, which has served to bring to light the evils of ultra pseudo- 
protestant individualism, but offers no remedy for it save the per- 
ilous alternative of falling back to a stand-point already surmounted 
in the way of religious progress. 

The true stand-point, all necessary for the wants of the times, is 
that of Protestant Catholicism, or genuine historical progress. 

This holds equally remote from all unchurchly subjectivity and 
all Romanizing churchism, although it acknowledges and seeks to 
unite in itself the truth which lies at the foundation of both these 
extremes. 

Occupying this historical stand-point from which the moving of 
God's spirit is discerned in all periods of the Church, we- may not 
in the first place surrender anything essential of the positive acqui- 
sition secured by the Reformation, whether Lutheran or Reformed. 

Neither may we again absolutely negative the later developments 
of Protestantism, not even Rationalism and Sectarism themselves, 
but must appropriate to ourselves rather the element of truth they 
contain, rejecting only the vast alloy of error from which it is to 
be extracted. 

Rationalism and Sectism possess historical right, so far as the 
principle of subjectivity, individuality, singleness and independence 
can be said to be possessed of right; that is, so far as this comes 
not in conflict with the principle of objectivity, generality, the 
Church, authority and law; so far then as it continues subordinate 
to these forces. 

Rationalism was a necessary schoolmaster for the orthodox the- 



214 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

ology, destroying its groundless prejudices, and compelling it to 
accept a more scientific form in general; and also in'particular to 
allow the human, the earthly, the historical, in the theanthropic na- 
ture of Christ and the Church, to come more fully to its rights. 

Whilst, however, the earlier historico-critical Rationalism has 
promoted a right understanding of the natural and historical in 
Christianity, this understanding in its case remains still but half 
true, since it has no organ for Ideas , the inward life of which his- 
tory after all is but the body. 

The later speculative Rationalism, or pantheistic Mythologism, 
or the Hegelingians, as the}' have been deridingly styled, (Dr. 
Strauss and his colleagues), which from the Ebionitic stand-point 
of the old system has swung over to the opposite extreme of docetic 
Gnostic idealism, fails to apprehend the idea of Christianity in its 
full truth and vitality, and substitutes for it a phantom or mere 
shadow, since it has no organ for historical Reality, the outward 
life, without which after all the idea must perish. 

As in the first centuries the theology of the Catholic Church 
gradually developed itself, through scientific struggles with the two 
ground heresies, Ebionism or Christianizing Judaism, and Gnosti- 
cism, or Christianizing Heathenism, so now also we are to look for 
a higher orthodox}', overmastering inwardly both forms of Protest- 
ant Rationalism, which shall bring the real and the ideal into the 
most intimate union, and fully recognize the eternal spirit of Chris- 
tianity as well as its historical body. 

The germs of all this are at hand in the later movements and 
achievements of the believing German theolog} T , and need only a 
farther development to issue at last in a full dogmatical reformation. 

Separation or division, where it is characterized by religious life, 
springs always from some real evil in the Church, and hence Sectism 
is to be regarded as a necessary disciplinarian and reformer of the 
Church in its practical life. 

Almost every sect represents in strong relief some particular 
aspect of piety, and contributes to the more full evolution of indi- 
vidual religious activity. 

Since, however, the truths of the Gospel form an inseparable unity, 
and the single member can become complete only along with the 
whole body of which it is a part, it follows that no sect can ever 
do justice fully even to the single interest to which it is one-si cledly 
devoted. 

Sects, after they have fulfilled their historical vocation, should 
fall back to the general communion from which they seceded, and 



Chap. XXI] theses for the time 215 

communicate to it whatever truthful acquisitions they may have 
made in a state of isolation. 

It is a cheering sign of the times, that in Protestant lands, differ- 
ing most, and in the bosom of the Reformed Church in which re- 
ligious individualism, both in the good and bad sense, has been most 
fully developed, it is coming to be felt, more and more, that the 
existing divisions of the Church are wrong, and with this is waking 
more and more to an earnest longing after a- true union of all be- 
lievers in no communication, however, with the errors of Oxford or 
Rome. 

Finally, also the liberation of the secular spheres of life from the 
Church since the Reformation, though not the ultimate normal 
order, forms, notwithstanding as compared with the previous vas- 
salage of the world to a despotic hierarchy, an advance in the 
naturalization process of Christian^. 

The luxuriant growth of these interests, as unfolded in the Prot- 
estant States, in the Arts, the Sciences and the Social Culture, 
lays the Church under obligations to appropriate these advances to 
herself, and to impress upon them a religious character. 

The signs of the times, then, and the teachings of history, point 
us not backwards, but forwards to a new era of the Church that 
may be expected to evolve itself gradually from the present process 
of fermentation, enriched with the positive gain of Protestantism. 

As the movement of history in the Church is like that of the 
sun from East to West, it is possible that America, into whose 
broad, majestic bosom the most various elements of character and 
education are poured from the old world, may prove the theatre 
of this unitive reformation. 

Thus far, if we put out of view the rise of a few insignificant 
sects, and the separation of Church and State, which to be sure 
has very momentous bearings, American Church History has pro- 
duced nothing original, no new fact in the history of the Church 
as a whole. 

No where else, however, is there at present the same favorable 
room for farther development, since in no country of the world 
does the Church enjoy such entire freedom, or the same power to 
renovate itself from within according to its own pleasure. 

The historical progress of the Church is always conditioned by 
the national elements, which form its physical basis. 

The two leading nationalities, which are continually coming into 
contact in this country, and flowing into one another with recipro- 
cal action, are the English and the German. 



216 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. Till 

The farther advancement of the American Church, consequently, 
must proceed mainly from a special combination of German depth 
and Gemuethlichkeit, with the force of character and active prac- 
tical talent for which the English are distinguished. 

It would be a rich offering then to the service of this approach- 
ing reformation, on the part of the German Churches in America, 
to transplant hither in proper measure the rich wealth of the bet- 
ter German theology-, improving it into such form as our peculiar 
relations might require. 

This, their proper vocation, however, the}' have thus far almost 
entirely overlooked, seeking their salvation for the most part in a 
characterless surrendry of their own nationality. 

In view of the particular constitution of a large part of the Ger- 
man emigration, this subjection to the power of a foreign life may 
be regarded indeed as salutary. 

But the time has now come when our churches should again rise 
out of the old German Adam, enriched and refined with the advan- 
tages of the English nationality. 

What we most need now is theoretically a thorough intellectual 
theology, scientifically free as well as decidedly believing, together 
with a general sense of histoiy ; and practically a determination to 
hold fast to the patrimony of our fathers, and to go forth joyfully at 
the same time in the wa}^ in which God's Spirit by providential signs 
niay lead, with a proper humble subordination of all we do for our 
own denomination to the general interests of the One Universal 
Church. 

The ultimate, sure scope of the Church, towards which the in- 
most wish and the most earnest prayer of all her true friends con- 
tinually tend, is that perfect and glorious unit}', the desire of which 
may be said to constitute the burden of our Lord's last, memorable, 
intercessory Prayer that His people may be one. 



CHAPTER XXII 

DR. S CHAFF'S Inaugural was admirably translated into the 
English language, as we have said, by Dr. Kevin, enlarged 
by the Introduction already referred to, together with the Sermon 
on Catholic Unity, delivered at the Triennial Convention at Har- 
risburg. This discourse was approved by that respectable Conven- 
tion at the time and ordered to be published in the weekly papers 
of the two Churches. It excited considerable interest at the time, 
and may be regarded as Dr. Kevin's first important contribution 
towards the solution of the Church Question. It was based on 
Eph. 4: 4-6: There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one bap- 
tism ; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through 
all, and in you all. 

In his introductory remarks, the preacher directs attention to 
the image of the Church as here delineated by the hand of an in- 
spired Apostle, compared with which nothing in the whole world 
can be found to be so resplendently beautiful or glorious under any 
other form. Christ is the end of all separation and strife to them 
that believe, in whom all former distinctions lose their antagonisms 
and are concealed in a higher unity, which is as comprehensive as 
humanity itself. Christianity is the universal solvent, in which all 
antitheses or opposites are required to flow in a new combination, 
pervaded throughout with light and harmony. The human world 
is first reconciled to God, and then with itself, by entering with 
living consciousness into the ground of its own life in the person 
of Christ Himself. "He is our peace, who hath made both one, and 
hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ; mak- 
ing in Himself of twain one new man." Such is the idea of the 
Church, which is "the body of Christ, the fullness of Him that 
filleth all in all." The Apostle does not say, Let there be one body 
and spirit, but assumes that such is the ease already, that there is 
one body — potentially — out of which members spring, in which it 
perpetually stands, and from which it must ever derive all its har- 
mony and stability, its acthdty and strength. From the beginning 
this great truth has dwelt deeply in the consciousness of the 
Church, in all ages and lands, uttering itself with one accord in 
the article of the Creed, I believe in one Holy Catholic Church.. 
14 (21T) 



218 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 

The Church is one and universal. Her unity is essential to her 
existence. 

The discourse is divided into two parts ; the first treats of the 
Nature and Constitution of this Holy Catholic Church, and the 
second of the Duty of Christians as it regards the unity, by which 
it is declared to be thus Catholic, and Hohv, and True. 

" The unity of the Church rests on the mystical union subsisting 
between Christ and believers. This is not simply moral, the har- 
mony of purpose, thought and feeling, but substantial and real, in- 
cluding a oneness of nature. It is as close and intimate as the 
union which binds the branches to the trunk of the vine, or the 
members and the head of the same natural hody. Christ Himself 
says, ' I am the bread of life. As the living Father hath sent me 
and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live 
by me.' 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
His blood, ye have no life in you.' ' We are members of His body, 
of His flesh, and His bones.' Such language as this, as Calvin 
says, is not hyperbolical but simple, great as the mystery which it 
describes may be to our apprehension. It is, however, not more 
difficult to apprehend than the fact of our union to the same extent 
with the person of the first Adam. 

"We partake," says Dr. Nevin, "truly and properly in Adam's 
very nature. His humanity, body and soul, has passed over into 
our persons. We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his 
bones. And so it is in the case of the second Adam as it regards 
the truly regenerate. They are inserted into His life, through 
faith, by the power of the Holy Ghost, and become thus incorpo- 
rated with it, as fully as they were before with that corrupt life the}' 
had by their natural birth. The whole humanity of Christ, soul 
and body, is carried by the process of the Christian salvation into 
the person of the believer; so that in the end his glorified bod}^,no 
less than his glorified soul, will appear as the natural and necessaiy 
product of the life in which he is thus made to participate. His 
resurrection is only his regeneration, fully revealed at last and com- 
plete. This representation rests throughout upon the fact that his 
life is grounded in the life of Christ, and so includes potentially all 
that belongs to it from the beginning. 

" The idea of this union on the part of believers with the entire 
humanity of Christ has in all ages entered deeply into. the con- 
sciousness of the Church. Hence the earnestness with which the 
Reformers generally maintained the doctrine of the real presence 
in the Lord's Supper. They saw and felt more clearly than many 



Chap. XXII] catholic unity 219 

of their followers seem to see and feel now, that the life of the be- 
liever involves a communion with the body of Christ or His human- 
ity, as well as with His Spirit. Calvin (as shown by quotations 
from his works in foot notes of the sermon. — Ed.) is particularly 
strong with regard to this point ; and some, like Dr. Dick and his 
followers, have found it hard to find any sense whatever in his lan- 
guage on the subject. The Heidelberg Catechism utters no uncer- 
tain sound in regard to this mystery (here at least decidedly Cal- 
vinistic. — Ed.), where it says that 'to eat the crucified body and to 
drink the shed blood of Christ means also to become more and 
more united to his sacred body, by the Holy Ghost, who dwells 
both in Christ and in us, so that w r e, although Christ is in heaven 
and we on earth, are notwithstanding flesh of His flesh, and bone of 
His bone; and that we live and are governed by one Spirit, as 
members of the same body are by one soul.' 

" Partaking in this way of one and the same life of Christ, Chris- 
tians are vitalty related and joined together as one great spiritual 
whole ; and this whole is the Church. The Church, therefore, is His 
Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. The union by which 
it is held together, through all ages, is organic. It is not a mere 
aggregation of individuals, drawn together by similarity of inter- 
ests and wants; not an abstraction simply, by which the common, 
in the midst of such multifarious distinction, is separated and put 
together under a single term. It is not merely the all that covers the 
actual extent of its membership, but the whole rather, in which the 
membership is comprehended and determined from the beginning. 
The Church does not rest upon its members, but the members rest 
upon the Church. Individual Christianity is not older than general 
Christian^, but the general in this case goes before the particular, 
ruling and conditioning all its manifestations. So it is with every 
organic nature. The parts in the end are only the revelation of 
what was previously included in the whole. All that we behold in 
the oak lay hidden in the acorn from the start. So too the human 
race all slept originally in the common root of the race. 

" Adam was not simply a man, or an individual like others born 
since; but he was the man, who comprehended in himself all that 
has since appeared in other men. Humanity as a whole resided in 
his person. He was strictly and truly the world of mankind. 
Through all ages man is organically one and the same. And 
parallel with this is the constitution of the Church. The second 
Adam corresponds in all respects with the first. He is not a man 
merely, one individual belonging to the race ; but He is the man, 



220 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 18-10-1844 [DlV. Till 

emphatically the Son of Man, comprising in His person the new 
creation, or humanity renewed and redeemed as a whole. Christ 
is the root of the Church ; and to the end of time it can include no 
more in its proper life, however widely distributed, than what is 
properly included in the root itself. 

" The Unity of the Church then is a cardinal truth in the Chris- 
tian system itself. The conception of individual or particular 
Christianity as something independent of the organic whole, which 
we denominate the Church, is a moral solecism that necessarily de- 
stroys itself. Christ cannot be divided. The members of the nat- 
ural body are united to the head, only by belonging to the body 
itself. Separated from this, they cease to have any proper exist- 
ence. And so it is here. We are not Christians, each one by him- 
self and for himself, but we become such through the Church. 
Christ lives in His people by the life which fills His body, the 
Church; and the\ r are thus all necessarily one, before they can be 
manj^. 

" The life of Christ in the Church, in the first place, is inward and 
invisible. But to be real it must also become outward. The salva- 
tion of the individual believer is not complete till the body is trans- 
figured and made glorious, as well as the soul ; and as it respects 
the whole nature of man from the commencement, it can never go 
forward at all except by a union of the outward and inward at 
every point of its progress. Thus, too, the Church must be visible 
as well as invisible. Soul and bod}', inward power and outward form, 
are here required to go together. Outward forms without inward 
life can have no saving force. But neither can inward life be main- 
tained, on the other hand, without outward forms. The body is 
not the man, and yet there can be no man where there is no body. 
Humauit}' is neither a corpse on the one hand, nor a phantom on 
the other. The Church must then appear externally in the world, 
and the case requires that this manifestation should correspond 
with the inward constitution of the idea itself. 

"The Apostle, however, does not mean to affirm that the want of 
such outward and visible unit}" necessarily and at once overthrows 
the existence of the Church. It is seldom that the actual in the 
sphere of Christianity fully corresponds with the ideal. And as a 
general thing, this correspondence, so far as it may be secured in 
any case, is to be reached only in a gradual way. Thus we behold 
at this time the Christian world, in fact, broken into various de- 
nominations, with separate confessions and creeds, in which too 
often polemic zeal appears far more prominent than Catholic char- 



Chap. XXII] catholic unity 221 

ity. Such distraction and diversion can never be vindicated as 
harmonizing with the true conception of the Church. They dis- 
figure and obscure its proper glory, and give a false, distorted im- 
age of its inward life. Still the Church is not on this account 
subverted or shut up to the precincts of some single sect, arro- 
gantly claiming to be the whole body. The life with which it is 
anointed does, indeed, seek an outward revelation in all respects 
answerable to its own nature; but as a process, struggling con- 
stantly to such an end, it may be vigorously active at the same time, 
under forms that bear no right proportion whatever to its wants. 
We may not doubt, therefore, but that in the midst of all distinc- 
tions which have come to prevail since the times of the Reformation, 
the life of the Church, with all its proper attributes, is still actively 
at work in every evangelical communion. Joined together in the 
common life of Christ, the various divisions of the Christian 
world are still organically the same Church. 

"Thus the actual, in fact, stands far behind the ideal; but still 
this relation cannot be rested in as ultimate and right. It can hold 
with truth only as an intermediate stage, through which the life of 
the Church is constantly struggling towards a revelation, that shall, 
in all respects, be adequate to its nature. Christians are bound to 
maintain ' the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,' and they 
cannot be true to their vocation, except as they constantly en- 
deavor, so far as in them lies, to have this unity made in the largest 
sense complete, so that Christ's people may, in the full sense of the 
term, be ' one body,' as well as one Spirit. 

" This would seem to be in some sense the necessity of the Church. 
The Saviour solemnly prays 'that they may all be one; as Thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us; 
that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.' Wonderful 
words ! understood only by living communion with Christ Himself. 
The whole Church then must be regarded as inwardly groaning 
over her own divisions, and striving to actualize the full import of 
this prayer; as though Christ were made to feel Himself divided, 
and could not rest until such unnatural violence should come to an 
end. And so if any man be in Christ, he cannot fail to pray and 
work for the same object, the Catholic Unity of the Church as the 
most important interest in the world. 

"In view of what has thus been said, it is in the first place the 
duty of Christians generally to lay to heart the evil that is compre- 
hended in the actual disunion and division which now prevail in 
the Catholic or Universal Church. The Church ought to be visibly 



9,9,9 



AT MERCERSBURG PROM 1840-1844 [DlV. VIII 



one and Catholic as she is one and Catholic in her inward life; and 
the want of such unity, as it appears in the present state of the 
Protestant world, with its rampant sectarianism and individualism, 
'is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation ' until of God's 
mercy this sore reproach be rolled away. 

" Apologies are sometimes made for the existence of sects in the 
Church as necessary to provoke each other to zeal and good works. 
Without them, it is alleged, the Church would stagnate and grow 
corrupt. This sounds well, but it is false notwithstanding, injurious 
to Christ, and a reflection upon Christianity itself. Our various 
sects, as they now actually exist, are an immense evil in the Church. 
Whatever may be said in palliating their existence, it is certain that 
they mar the unity of Christ's body in fact, and deprive it of its 
proper beauty and strength. The evil may in a certain sense be 
necessary, but the necessity is like that which exists for the rise of 
heresies, itself the presence of a deep-seated evil, in which the 
Church has no right quietly to acquiesce. Our sects, as they actu- 
alty stand at the present time, are a reproach to the Christian cause. 
By no possibility could the}' be countenanced and approved as good 
by the Lord Jesus Christ, if He should appear again in the world 
as the visible Head of His people. This all must feel. 

" We do not suppose that the visible unity of the Church de- 
mands a single visible head, like the Pope of Rome, who is justly 
styled Antichrist for this very pretension. We do not suppose that 
it can hold only under a given organization, stretching its arms 
from one end of the earth to the other, according to the dream of 
the High Church Episcopalian. But this much it most certainly 
does require that the middle walls of partition, as the}' now divide 
sect from sect, should be broken down, and the whole Christian 
Church brought not only to acknowledge and* feel, but to show 
itself evidently one. How far it is from this at the present time, 
it is not necessar}- to say. Xow what is wanted first of all, is a 
clear perception on the part of the Church as a whole, that is, on 
the part of Christians generall}-, that the want of such visible 
unity is a wrong, and such a wrong as calls aloud continually for 
redress. Without this, most assuredly, the captivity of Zion will 
never come to an end. The heart of the Church must be filled 
with an earnest and deep sense of her own calamity, as thus torn 
and rent with such vast division, before she can be engaged suc- 
cessfully to follow after union and peace. It needs to be deeply 
pondered upon, that the spirit of sect and party, as such, is contrary 
to Christ; and that the present state of the Church involves the 



Chap. XXII] catholic unity 223 

sin of schism to a most serious extent. Denominations are not 
necessarily sects, and every separate ecclesiastical position is not 
to be denounced at once as schismatic. But take it altogether there 
is schism in our divisions. The unity of Christ's Body is not 
maintained. This we are called upon to consider and lament. 

" Let it be admitted that there is no way open at present by which 
we have ai^ prospect of seeing these walls of partition broken 
down; still it is none the less the duty of all who love Christ, to 
take to heart the presence of the evil itself, to be humbled before 
God on account of it, and to desire earnestly that it may come to 
an end. Does it not lie in the conception of the Church, that 
these divisions should pass away and make room for the reign at 
last of Catholic unity and love? If sects as they now appear have 
been the necessaiy fruitage of the Reformation, then must we say 
that the Reformation, being as we hold it to be from God, has not 
yet been conducted towards its legitimate results, in this respect at 
least. What it has divided it must have power again in due time 
to bring together and unite. Our Protestant Christianity cannot 
continue to stand in its present form. A Church without unity 
can neither conquer the world, nor sustain the world. We are 
bound therefore to expect that this unity will not always be want- 
ing. The hour is coming, though it be not now, when the prayer 
of Christ that the Church may be one will appear gloriously 
fulfilled in its actual character and state, throughout the whole 
world. But before this great change is effected, it must be the ob- 
ject first of much earnest prayer, desire and expectation. It is not 
by might and by power, not by outward urging and driving in the 
common style, but only by the Spirit of the Lord, that any such 
revolution as this can be accomplished. A crusade against sects, 
or a societ}^ to put down sects in a negative way, can answer no 
good purpose here in the end. If the evil is ever to be effectually 
surmounted, it must be by the growth of Christian charity in the 
bosom of the Church itself. No union can be of any account at all, 
that is not produced by inward sympathy and agreement between 
the parties it brings together. But this preparation of the heart is 
itself something to be sought and cultivated, and we may say that 
the very first step towards it consists in just that consideration and 
concern which is now represented to be due in the case of Christians 
on the whole subject. 

" A no-sect party in the Church, bent only on pulling clown and 
having no power to reconstruct, must ever be found itself one of 
the worst forms of separation, aggravating the mischief it proposes 



224 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlV. YIII 

to heal. It is not by renouncing then their allegiance to particular 
denominations, and affecting to hold themselves independent of all, 
that men may expect to promote the cause of Christian unity. The 
union of the Church, in any case, is not to be established by strat- 
agem or mere policy of any kind. To be valid, it must be free, the 
spontaneous product of Christian knowledge and Christian love. 
It can never hold externally, not even from certain advantages that 
it may seem to bring with it, until it is made necessary b} T the pres- 
ence of inward want, refusing to be satisfied on any other terms. 
But all this does not involve the consequence that there is nothing 
to be done on the part of Christians, to hasten this consummation 
in time. It is b}^ inward and spiritual action, precisely, that the 
way of the Lord is to be prepared for any such deliverance, and to 
such action all who love the prosperity of Zion are solemnl} T bound. 
When it shall come to this, that hy such inward action the Church 
shall be fulty ripe for union, the difficulties that now stand will 
soon be found crumbling and dissolving into thin air. ' Every 
valley shall be exalted, and eveiy mountain and hill shall be made 
low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places 
plain.' That which is impossible with men is easih T accomplished 
by God. 

" Then, in the third place, it is the duty of the Church to observe 
and improve all opportunities, by which it is made possible in any 
measure, from time to time, to advance, in a visible way, the inter- 
est of Catholic unity. We are not at liberty in. the case to run 
before the Lord presumptuously, taking the whole work into our 
OAvn hands ; but we are bound, at the same time, to follow promptly 
where He leads. Just so soon, and as far, therefore, as the way 
may be open in any direction for advancing the outward and visible 
oneness of the Church, without prejudice to its true inward integ- 
rity, it is our solemn duty to turn the occasion to the highest ac- 
count. It is not to be imagined, of course, that the general recon- 
ciliation of the divisions that now prevail in the Christian world, 
in whatever form it may at last appear, will be effected suddenly 
and at once. It must come, if it comes at all, as a process grad- 
ually ripening into this glorious result. Eveiy instance then in 
which the open correspondence and communion of particular sec- 
tions of the Church is made to assume, in a free way, a more inti- 
mate character than it had before, deserves to be hailed as being, 
to some extent, at least, an approximation towards the unity which 
the whole body is destined finally to reach. Xo movement of this 
sort can be regarded as indifferent. Whatever can serve in any 



Chap. XXII] catholic unity 225 

way to bring together the moral dispersions of the house of Israel, 
must be counted worthy of the most earnest regard. 

"It is terrible to be concerned, however remotely, in dividing 
the Church ; but a high and glorious privilege to take part, even 
to the smallest extent, in the work of restoring the divisions where 
the}^ already exist. I would not for the world be the founder of a 
new sect, though assured that millions would at last range them- 
selves beneath its shadow ; but if I might be instrumental with 
the humblest agency in helping only to pull clown a single one of 
all those walls of partition, that now mock the idea of Catholic 
unity in the visible Church, I should feel that I had not lived in 
vain, nor labored without the most ample and enduring reward." 

The sermon concluded with a highly favorable reference to the 
effort that had just been made to bring about a closer union be- 
tween the Dutch and German Reformed Churches in this country. 
Encouraging progress had been made in that direction, of which 
the Triennial Convention at Harrisburg was a sufficient proof. It 
was merely an advisoiy body, a friendly arrangement, by which it 
was hoped that the two denominations might be fully united in the 
future. Dr. Xevin thought that it was just one of those oppor- 
tunities that presented itself to promote the cause of church union 
in general, and with the blessing of God, might be followed with 
consequences of good, far more vast than any one at the time had 
the power to imagine. But these expectations were not realized at 
the time, and sad to say, the Triennial Convention had only a brief 
existence. It first meeting was also its last. The day had not yet 
come even for the unification of these two denominations, which had 
been very closely connected from the beginning of their history in 
this country. The Church Question needed further discussion, and 
it was necessary that a genuine Church consciousness should first 
be awakened, and this then was to be educated and made to take a 
wider range. 

We have been thus specific in giving the contents of the Inau- 
gural and the Sermon on Catholic Unity, because they were the 
basis of what began to be called " Mercersbnrg Theology," and the 
starting point of numerous very earnest discussions and controver- 
sies. There was here substantially a remarkable agreement in the 
views of the two writers, or founders of this new theological school, 
the one having been brought up in a strict puritanic school , and 
the other having just come from the heart of German theology at 
Berlin, trained by such theologians as Xeander and other giants in 
theological science. It was not, however, brought about simply 



226 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1840-1844 [DlY. YIII 

to produce harraon}^, but was the result of previous training on the 
part of Dr. Nevin. He had also studied the Church Question, and 
was prepared not only to endorse the Inaugural, but to supplement 
it with thoughts of his own. Dr. Schaff made his contribution to 
the solution of the problem mainly from the domain of Church His- 
tory; Dr. Nevin, on the other hand, more particularly from the 
stand-point of the mystical union subsisting between Christ and be- 
lievers, and of a sound evangelical theolog}'. Whilst there may have 
been points of divergence, amounting possibly to some difference of 
tendencies, in the two productions, the} r are substantial^ the same 
in the fundamental thoughts and the general drift of their discus- 
sions. How did such a thing happen ? It certainly was not the re- 
sult of calculation or expediency. It cannot be explained, as it 
seems to us, without admitting that the hand of Providence was in 
the movement from the very beginning. Here two streams of 
thought flowing from opposite hemispheres of the earth met, and 
uniting their contents flowed together towards the great ocean of 
the future in this new world of America. It would be difficult to 
believe that it was merely a coincidence as the rationalist would 
say. It had, however, been preceded by many pra3 T ers going up 
from rnanj' places, and all this for man}- }^ears. If a rational ex- 
planation is demanded, we would say that it is here in the antece- 
dent which preceded the consequent. 



IX-AT MERCERSBDRG FROM 1844-1853 

Mt. 41-50 



CHAPTER XXIII 



DR. SCHAFF'S Address was delivered on the 24th of October, 
1844, and was listened to Iry many of the ministers of the 
Reformed Church after the adjournment of the Synod at Allen town. 
The German edition, however, was not published until March of 
the following year, and the English translation not until the month 
of June, 1845. Some unfavorable criticisms had been made in 
regard to its orthodox}^ when it was first delivered, and we may 
suppose that additional care was exercised whilst it was being pre- 
pared for the press, that its statements should be still more care- 
fully guarded, so that they might not lead to misapprehension or 
misrepresentation. To forestall anything of the kind Dr. Nevin 
prepared the lengthy Introduction to the work, which was much 
more apologetic than polemic. It was, however, watched in its 
progress through the press, and when it made its appearance it 
was read, especially in its English dress, throughout the Church 
with critical eyes, both friendly and unfriendly. 

The preliminary attack on the entire work was aimed at Dr. 
Nevin b}^ Dr. Joseph F. Berg, pastor of the Reformed Church in 
Philadelphia, and editor of the Protestant Banner. He was a pop- 
ular preacher and writer, and one of the leaders among the ultra- 
Protestant champions of the times. He had lectured against the 
errors of the Church of Rome, published some books on the subject, 
and believed with many others of his day, that it was the synagogue 
of Satan, without any claims whatever to be called a Christian 
Church. He was in such a state of mind that he could not endure 
f\\\y remark that in the least favored the " harlot " of Rome, and 
when anything of the kind occurred, he became almost as much 
excited as some of Cromwell's soldiers when they saw the sign of 
the cross borne by the Papal legions in Flanders. He had heard 
from an ex-monk, whom he had converted and sent to Mercersburg 
for the purpose of studying theology, that Dr. Nevin had taught in 
the Seminary that the Church of Rome was a part of the Church 

(227) 



228 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of Christ, and that Christ was really and trul} T present in the Lord's 
Supper. The convert, who had been congratulating himself on his 
escape from the kingdom of darkness, was surprised to learn that 
he had not been as much in the hands of Satan as he had supposed, 
and reported what he had heard to his pastor and patron in Phila- 
delphia. This piece of information, together with the reading of 
the Inaugural treatise, had its effect on the mind of Dr. Berg, and 
he resolved to meet and crush at once what he regarded as serious 
error or heres} T in the teachings of the Seminary at Mercersburg. 
To this he was urged on by his sympathizers in his own and other 
churches, as well as Ir^ his position as one of the great anti-Catholic 
champions of the day. For this purpose he employed the Protestant 
Banner, of which he had the control, the organ of a considerable 
amount of the anti-Catholic phrensy of the time. From its battle- 
ments the first gun was discharged in a theological controversy 
which extended over a number of years. The first report was 
sharp, quick, inconsiderate, and injudicious. 

The charge was made not in the way of a review or criticism of 
Dr. Kevin's published views, but rather in the form of an arraign- 
ment against him of a breach of trust in his official capacity as 
theological professor in the Reformed Church, sworn to teach ac- 
cording to the Heidelberg Catechism. The design of the impeach- 
ment seemed to be to show that such a professor was unworthy of 
his position, as one who had abused the confidence reposed in him 
by the Church. These charges appearing in the Protestant Banner 
contrary to canon law, were probably intended as merely prelim- 
inary to a more formal arraignment before the tribunal of the 
Synod, which was to meet a few months afterwards in October. 
So Dr. Kevin doubtless understood it ; at any rate he had made 
his reply in three extended articles in the Messenger, before the 
end of August, which were read with interest and concern through- 
out the Churches. 

He styled his articles " Pseudo-Protestantism," in which he 
sought not merely to defend his own position, but vigorously to 
attack that other form of Protestantism itself in which his oppo- 
nent stood and derived much of his popularity. In other words, 
whilst the coasts at home were defended, the war was carried into 
Africa. The charge in general was that he was guilty of a "Roman- 
izing tendency ; " but that is something vague, and is sometimes 
applied to those holding doctrines or customs in common with the 
Catholic Church, to those who maintain the doctrine of the Trinity, 
as well as to those who observe the order of festivals in the church 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 229 

3 T ear. Dr. Nevin therefore had to inquire what exactly was meant 
by it. After sifting the somewhat declamatory indictment he 
found two specific charges, to which he felt himself bound to give 
his attention ; one was that he taught that the Roman Catholic 
Church was a part of the Church of Christ, and the other that he 
held a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. 

In reply he maintained that a distinction was to be made between 
a pure and a true church of Christ. A church might be very im- 
pure, with error and corruptions in it, and very little piety, and yet 
be legitimately and properly called a Christian Church. Where 
the ministry is regular, the word of God preached, and the sacra- 
ments administered, the body still possesses the attributes of a true 
Church, and no one has a right to deprive it of all Christian char- 
acter. The Roman Church possesses all these, — with errors and 
many human traditions, which are believed to be in conflict with the 
spirit of the Gospel; but it is no part of Protestant or Reformed 
orthodox}'' to maintain that it, with its millions of children, has 
lost all claim to be called a Christian body. This unchurches by far 
the larger part of Christendom, including the Greek as well as the 
Roman Churches, something which none of the Reformers attempted 
to do. With them it was not an object to destroy the Church of 
the previous ages, but to accomplish its reformation by the removal 
of old errors or the dead accumulations of the past, and the renewal 
of its youth, by the infusion of the spirit of the Gospel into the 
hearts of all Christians. 

Such views of the Catholic Church, both charitable and liberal, 
were regarded at the time by many persons as bordering on serious 
heresy, and subjected those who dared to utter them to the sus- 
picion of being in secret sj^mpathy with the " man of sin " at Rome, 
if not of some want of loyalt}^ to republican institutions. The 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Cincinnati had, 
after a long and warm discussion, decided, with a considerable de- 
gree of unanimity, that Romish baptism was not valid, and there- 
fore no baptism at all. That seemed to settle the question once 
and for ever, and the Presbyterian papers, even the most conserva- 
tive ones among them, without any reservation approved of the de- 
cision, which left Roman Christians in as bad a condition as the un- 
baptized heathen. It was fully abreast of the decisions of the Pope 
himself, when he yearly anathematizes the Protestants and cuts 
them off from all communion with the Church of Christ, although 
admitting at the same time that their baptism is valid and affirming 
that they are only his stray children. A short time afterwards, 



230 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1S44-1853 [DlV. IX 

however, Professor Charles Hodge, of Princeton, in a learned and 
vigorous article in the Princeton Review, on the other hand, went 
on to prove the validity of Romish baptism, in direct opposition to 
the new utterance of the Assembly. The arguments were unas- 
sailable, drawn out in the pure diction and convincing logic of 
which Dr. Hodge was master. His arguments are derived from 
histoiy, by which he shows successfully that the validity of Romish 
baptism has all along been taught by the Protestant churches, and 
to maintain the contraiy is a novelty, if not in itself a serious error; 
and to defend this latter is to assert that Romish priests are not 
ordained ministers, and that the Church of Rome is in no sense a 
Christian Church. 

"To deny the validity of the ordinances of the Catholic Church," 
sa} T s Dr. Hodge, "we must unchurch almost the whole Christian 
world; and Presbyterians, 'instead of being the most Catholic 
Church, admitting the being of a Church, wherever we see the fruits 
of the Spirit, would become one of the narrowest and most bigoted 
of sects. Indeed, we cannot but regard this sudden denunciation 
of Romish baptism as a momentary outbreak of Poper} T itself; a 
disposition to contract the limits of the Church, and to make that 
essential to its being and sacraments which God has never declared 
to be necessary." 

Dr. Nevin commented at large on the utterance from Princeton, 
regarded it as most opportune, and as a deserved rebuke of the 
"madness of the Assembly," under the circumstances. He then 
proceeds to analyze the spirit from which it proceeded in his usual 
vigorous style. 

" It is not to be disguised that the whole interest of Protestant- 
ism itself at the present time is brought into great danger by a false 
tendency, which has sprung up b}^ perversion out of the system 
itself, and now threatens to carry all hopelessly in its new direction. 
This tendency in its relation to Romanism is simply negative, re- 
volutionary and destructive. It sees in the Roman Church no good 
whatever, but absolute evil only. The whole life of the Reforma- 
tion for it holds not in any direct historical continuation with the 
previous state of the Church, but only as an abrupt breach with 
this, involving a new order of existence altogether. Hence follows 
a want of all right respect for history; and with it the loss of every 
proper conception of the Church, as an organic continuous develop- 
ment of the life of Jesus Christ. The general is made to sink below 
the claims of the individual and particular. With this again is 
found to prevail a shallow rationalistic turn of mind, to which all 



Chap. XXIIIJ pseudo-protestantism 231 

that is deep in the positive life of religion becomes offensive or 
suspicious, as savoring of mysticism. In this way the tendency 
may run into neology or infidelity, but this is b}^ no means neces- 
sary. Where circumstances require, it can hold as well in connec- 
tion with the most orthodox forms of belief. The false spirit, how- 
ever, that actuates this kind of opposition to Romanism must be 
more or less evident to every serious mind. It is mighty to pull 
down in its own wa}^, but has no power to build up, or even to pre- 
serve what is already built. It is ready to make common cause 
with almost any interest, no matter how bad it may be theologically, 
if it only rage against the papal Church. All is wrong for it and 
only wrong on the side of popery, and all is right for it on its own 
side. Hence it is loveless, harsh — a new incarnation in fact of the 
papacy itself. It out-popes the Pope himself, in this respect. And 
this is called contending manfully for the truth against the man of 
sin. Such is the character of Pseudo-Protestantism when it comes 
to anything like a full development of its proper life. 

" Protestantism doubtless includes a negative distinctional force 
towards the errors of Rome. Bat it does not stand in an}^ such 
force, as such. It becomes negative only by being in the first 
place positive, the power of a new life, struggling to surmount all 
that would hinder it in its free growth. So it was with Luther. 
The fanatics and infidels of his clay occupied a wholly different 
position. They were negative and negative only. But Luther was 
first positive, and then, only, as the consequence of this, negative. 
And the true spirit of Protestantism remains the same to this day. 
So at the present time, beyond all doubt, one of the most effective 
allies, which Romanism finds among us, is precisely this form of 
opposition to its power. One might almost suspect some of our 
noisiest ranters against Rome to be themselves paid emissaries of 
the Pope. By doing all that in them lies to turn Protestantism 
into the form of mere negation and contradiction, they caricature 
its true life, and bring into peril all that constitutes its tone, strength 
and glory. 

"But is not Popery Antichrist, the Man of Sin, and so on," Dr. 
Nevin asks. "If this is allowed," he then says, "very properly it 
does not follow that the Roman Church is without Christianity. 
Antichrist is always represented as revealing himself in the Church. 
He began to manifest himself even in the days of the Apostles. 
He is widely active also in the Protestant Church as well as in the 
Church of Rome. Let the Papacy be counted as bad as any one 
may choose to make it, still it is not as such the Roman Catholic 



232 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1S53 [DlV. IX 

Church. There is a clear distinction to be made between Popery 
and the Church of which Home is the acknowledged centre ; a dis- 
tinction admitted by every one who is at all authorized, in point of 
historical knowledge, to have any opinion in the case. The Cath- 
olic Church stood before the Reformation under the } T oke of Popery; 
the same Church now stands, mainlj' at least, Reformed and free, 
under the Protestant banner. To the Reformation, in the language 
of another, we owe the high privilege of being Catholic, and yet 
not Roman — ' One side of the relation between the two Churches 
is, 1 sa3^s Professor Hengstenberg, 'that was before, in some mea- 
sure, cast into the shade, is now brought into clearer light by the 
pressure of modern rationalism. The great controvers} T with infi- 
delity^, belonging to both in common, requires that attention should 
always be fixed, from either side on points of agreement, as well as 
on points of difference.' Not to do this now, is a far more serious 
fault than ever before. To fail in recognizing Christ where He is 
present, is always dangerous, but most especially where the cir- 
cumstances of the times make this so easy, that one must violently 
close his eyes not to see this fact." 

Having disposed of the first charge of a Romanizing tendency, 
preferred by his friend Dr. Berg, Dr. Nevin then proceeds in reply 
to the second, and sums up his defense b}^ maintaining the following 
thesis : " That it forms no part of the orthodoxy of the Reformed 
Church to deny the spiritual real presence of Christ in the Lord's 
Supper ; but on the contrary, to do so is a serious departure from 
the true and proper faith of the Church." 

The reply to this part of the accusation was much more a defense 
of what was considered the Reformed or Calvinistic view of the 
Lord's Supper, over against prevalent views of the subject, than 
anything like a personal defense of the writer himself. Primarily, 
the question was whether the doctrine of the real presence of Christ 
in the Eucharist entered into the creed of the Reformed Church; 
but naturally the subject required that its absolute truth, under a 
theological view, should also be considered. Respect had to be had 
to its logical ground and constitution throughout in the system. 
There the personal character of the controversy was lost sight of 
in the discussion of one of the profoundest questions in theolog} T , 
and the opponent, Dr. Berg, was left in the background. Thus the 
rejoinder became a learned article, which would have strengthened 
and dignified the pages of a theological quarterly. 

"The doctrine in question," writes Dr. Nevin nearly one-half of 
a century ago, "is one of vast importance. There can be no surer 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 233 

evidence of the want of theological earnestness than the style in 
which some allow themselves to look down upon the whole sacra- 
mental controversy as the fruit of ignorance and superstition, the 
mournful folly of a lyy-gone age. Whether men see it or not, that 
controversy enters into the very core of Christianity. It is not 
owing so much to our piety, or to the great extent of our knowl- 
edge, most assuredly, that we have come for the most part to have 
so little trouble about it, as compared with the Church of the six- 
teenth century. It is the result rather of a shallow rationalistic 
tendency, which has come to prevail too generally in our religious 
thinking. It betrays the most miserable superficiality both of heart 
and mind, to suppose that either Luther or Calvin was here influ- 
enced by an unfree prejudice, carried over blindly from the dark- 
ness of popery," and standing in no inward connection with their 
faith in other respects. Both were spiritually bound by a force 
which they had no power to break. The inmost life of religion 
was felt to be staked on the question. And this feeling was sound 
and true. The sacramental question does involve the main life of 
religion itself. 

" For what is religion ? Xot a creed nor a well-ordered life. Not 
simply pious sentiments and affections. All these belong to it ; but 
in the form of Christianity as distinguished from every lower form 
of religion, it is more than all this. It stands in a living union 
with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this view, it is a new 
order of life by which the man is apprehended in the very centre of 
his person, and made the subject of a process that transforms his 
whole nature into a new type. This process commences with 
regeneration and terminates in the resurrection at the last day, 
renovating the entire man, body as well as soul. It is a new and 
higher form of humanity that is thus brought to prevail in the 
believer, over the fallen and corrupt nature he has inherited from. 
Adam. And as such it flows over to his person only from Christ, 
who is the second Adam, and in this respect stands in the same re- 
lation to our race precisely as the first. The new creation begins 
wholly in His person. In Him the Word became Flesh, incorporated 
itself with humanity that it might become the life of men ; and this 
end is now secured only as the humanity thus exalted in Christ — 
not for Himself but for our race — is carried over by the Holy Ghost 
into the persons of those who are united to Him by faith. The 
union of the believer with Christ then is not a legal union simply; 
nor is it simply a moral union, holding in intimate and free corres- 
pondence of thought and affection. It is rather a union that in- 
15 



234 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

volves oneness of nature, a participation on the side of believers in 
the life of Christ substantially considered. But this life is at the 
same time human life, and if communicated at all, it must be com- 
municated in this form. The mystical union of believers with 
Christ then includes a participation, not simply in His spirit, but 
also in His body; since the idea of humanity, that it is spirit only, 
and not body at the same time, must be considered a sheer abstrac- 
tion, a contradiction in fact that overthrows itself. Our union with 
Christ inserts us into His humanity as a whole ; not merely into His 
spirit as such and not merely into His body as such; bat into His 
person as the living union of both. 

"The modus of this union we cannot be expected of course to 
understand or explain. It is nr^stical and in its nature incompre- 
hensible. Bat do we understand any better the modus of our par- 
ticipation in the proper humanity of Adam? To say that it is by 
means of our descent from Him in the way of natural birth explains 
nothing. That is simply the form in which the fact holds ; as in 
the other case it holds in the form of our new birth by the Holy 
Ghost. But the fact is no more intelligible in the one case than in 
the other. 

" Of the fact, however, we ought not to entertain any doubt, as 
it lies at the very ground of our salvation. Humanity itself must 
first be raised into anion with God, and we can be saved only as 
we become incorporated with it by grace in this form. Christ ac- 
cordingly appeared in the world, not simply that He might be the 
occasion of life to men, but as the principle and source of life in 
the fullest sense. He became flesh, not simply as a helper, but that 
He might gather us up in Himself by inward union with His na- 
ture, and so redeem us from all death as well as from all sin. He is 
the resurrection and the life. We can have no life then, except as 
we are made to partake substantially, not in the doctrine, not in 
the promise, not in His merits simply, but in His very life itself 
under its human form, so as to be found in the end to be 'bone of 
His bone and flesh of His flesh.' 

" This view of the union between Christ and believers has entered 
deeply into the consciousness of the Church in all ages, in propor- 
tion precisely to the measure of its religious earnestness ; and it 
will continue to be so to the end of time. There can be no deep 
Christianity without it. Where it is denied it will be found in- 
variably, on close inquiry, that a false rationalistic element has 
crept in and begun to corrupt the truth at the expense of its living- 
power. Such a spirit will know of nothing but a simply moral con- 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 235 

nection, the same in kind with the relation of a pious Jew to Moses, 
his venerated lawgiver. All beyond this is set down at once for 
unintelligible mysticism. But then is not the Incarnation of the 
everlasting Word mysticism in the same sense and to the same ex- 
tent? Both facts, the Incarnation of Christ and the insertion of 
believers into the new form of humanity thus constituted in His 
person, stand in the same relation to reason. Properly speaking, 
we say that both facts are at bottom but one and the same fact. 
The idea of the Incarnation of the Word that was to be restricted 
in its force to the separate person of a single man, to be known 
afterwards as an isolated miracle in the general stream of human 
history, is utterly unbiblical, and must necessarily evaporate into 
a Gnostic phantom in the end. The Incarnation was for the race ; 
and only as we embrace it in this view as a permanent fact in the 
history of humanity, by which the whole life of the Word made 
flesh is still continued and perpetuated in the Church to the end of 
the world, can the doctrine be said to have any lodgement in our 
hearts. Men deceive themselves, I repeat it, when thej^ pretend to 
give full credit to this central fundamental fact of Christianity as 
exhibited in the Head of the Church, and yet raise the cry of mys- 
ticism when they hear of an extension of the power of this fact to 
the body, for which the Head may be said to exist." 

The writer then goes on to say, that the subject of the union 
between Christ and believers, as the core and marrow of all true 
divinity, connects itself vitally with the sacramental question. The 
one determines the other by a necessar}^ sequence. The sacraments 
are related to the inmost idea of the Christian life. Our view of 
them, therefore, will always correspond with the view we take of 
the nature of this life. If the latter is low and rationalistic, the 
former will possess the same general rationalistic character. No 
one believing that the life of Christ is also the life of the believer 
can believe that the sacraments are mere signs by which the Church 
is simply reminded of an absent Saviour. If the Incarnation of 
the Divine Word is a permanent fact, and no mere transient phan- 
tasm in the history of humanity, the power of a new human life, 
developing itself in humanity organically in the Church from age 
to age, then the sense of a real, present, human Christ in these 
ordinances must come to prevail at the same time, as its necessary 
consequence. 

" Such a connection as this has pervaded the Christian Church, 
more or less, in all ages, but never more so than during the period 
of the Reformation. It was then a vital question upon which all 



236 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1841-1853 [DlV. IX 

others seemed to turn, and it led to more earnest discussion than 
any other among the Reformers. They rejected transubstantiation 
as an explanation of the great mystery. This presented it in the 
light of a magical operation, according to which the bread and 
wine, while the}' retain their common sensible properties, are ac- 
tually transmuted, so far as their essence is concerned, into the 
very body and blood of Christ. But whilst the intelligence as well 
as the Christian consciousness of the Reformers to a man rejected 
such a theoiy as this, which was simphv human, they all clung to 
the sublime mystery with a tenacity which amidst the wide-spread 
unbelief and rationalism of the age was something remarkable. 
Luther, who, in this matter, exhibited a heroic faith, no matter 
whether in conflict with his natural understanding or not, here oc- 
cupied the right wing in this long controversy, holding what has 
been, perhaps improperly, called the theory of consubstantiation 
or impanation, attributed to his followers." 

The hero-Reformer of Switzerland, Ulric Zwingli, the Apostle of 
humanism as well as of the new faith, on the other hand, occupied 
the left wing of the great sacramentarian controversy. The ten- 
dency as a reactionary force was intense, sufficient to cany along 
with it ordinary minds, not well ballasted, or rooted and grounded 
in the faith; but it had its triumphs and votaries in the course of 
time only among the Arminians of Holland and subsequently 
among the heartless rationalists of Germany. Zwingli, it is true, 
was charged with having bowed to the new Baal that was set up to 
separate Christ from his own appointments; but it was done with 
great injustice at the time of the Reformation, and in modern times 
also by some respectable writers, who regard him as the father of 
rationalistic views of the Eucharist which he would have repudiated 
in his day. It cannot be said truthfully that he, with all his concern 
to rescue the new faith from what he believed to be the dangerous 
nrysticism of Luther's doctrine, discarded the real or true mystical 
union of Christ and believers either from the Christian s} T stem 
itself, or from the Lord's Supper, in some sense its embodiment. 
"We by no means," he says, "hold that Christ is absent from the 
Lord's Supper. His flesh and blood are the aliment of life. Unless 
our souls are fed with this food, the}' have no life." And he goes 
on to affirm: "Truly, but in a peculiar way, that is, sacramentally, 
we receive the body of Christ. For his flesh is in us, and we in 
IJiin, and quickens us as members to the Head." Much more might 
be quoted of like tenor to show that Zwingli did not consider the 
consecrated bread and wine as mere, naked signs or symbols. 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 23Y 

Dr. Ebrard in his "Dogma des Heiligen Abendmahls und seine 
Greschichte " has fully vindicated him from the imputation of such 
a shallow, rationalistic view of the inmost sanctuary of the Chris- 
tian faith. The same truly learned work will show that the esti- 
mate given of him as a fanatical radical by such historians as 
Froude, without any correct knowledge of historical facts, is sim- 
ply crude and imaginary. Still it must be admitted that Zwingli, 
in his zeal to eliminate old superstitions, did not alw^s do himself 
justice in his statements of the sacramental mystery. He died a 
martyr on the field of battle whilst he was still comparatively 
young. Had he lived to be as old as the other Reformers, his eu- 
charistic views, no doubt, would have grown in intensit} 7 , and the 
Church been still further edified by riper fruit from his command- 
ing intellect. 

By the force of circumstances and the progress or development 
of the Reformation itself, Calvin on the Reformed side and Melanch- 
thon on the Lutheran were brought to occup}? - a central position 
in the theological army, called out to defend the true encharistic 
faith. After the two wings had spent their strength and found 
themselves fighting each other instead of the common enemy in an 
antagonism, which should have been onlj 7 an antithesis, they gave 
up the struggle for the time being. During a sort of a lull in the 
conflict the two distinguished t' eologians, just mentioned, came 
forth from the centre and for a time commanded the field. Calvin 
could not be satisfied with Zwingli's view of the Lord's Supper, 
and the same was true of Melanchthon in regard to what was 
claimed to be the distinctive Lutheran view. They both allowed 
themselves to advance to a higher stand-point from which the old 
antagonism might be happily reconciled. Their doctrines on the 
Lord's Supper were virtually the same, with only a slight coloring 
derived from the school or system in which each one stood. 

After the death of Zwingli, Calvin became the most distinguished 
representative of the Reformed faith, and his view of the Lord's 
Supper, as the result of a normal growth, became the doctrine of 
the Reformed Church. With numerous quotations from his Insti- 
tutes, Dr. Xevin accordingly shows that his sacramental views, for 
which he had been charged by his opponent with serious error, 
heres}^, and a Romanizing tendency, were simply those of Calvin 
himself. With Calvin onty through the medium of faith could any 
one partake of the Saviour's person, whilst partaking of His hoi}' 
ordinance. Still, however, the participation was viewed as real, 
and as effected also by a force belonging to the sacrament itself, 



238 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

which, of course, would be impossible or magical, unless as the 
sacrament is regarded as made up of two things, the inward no 
less than the outward. The bond uniting the visible sio-n with the 
invisible grace was not considered to be simply a mental act on 
the part of the worshipper, but a true objective connection of the 
one with the other; onby this sacramental relation, it was held, 
could not itself exist except for the apprehension of faith. As 
divine truth is not created b}^ any state of the soul itself, so the 
real presence of Christ in the Supper was regarded as a fact mys- 
teriously involved in the nature of the Sacrament itself, and not 
something brought into it hy faith or any force of its own, apart 
from the ordinance viewed in its own particular form. 

Calvin has been strangely charged with teaching that the soul of 
the believer feeds on the literal mortal bod} T and blood of Christ in 
the Eucharist, as these existed before his death and resurrection, 
as if an immaterial Spirit could literal!}' eat material flesh, a greater 
absurdit} T than consubstantiation itself. Of course he never taught 
anything of the kind, and probably no one else did. 

" He does indeed speak of the flesh of Christ as having a vivific 
virtue, and insists of course upon a spiritual manducation in the 
case as distinguished from such as is sinipf^ corporeal. It nuvy be 
admitted too that his psychology is not altogether satisfacto^. But 
it is perfectly plain that by the life-giving flesh of the Saviour, he 
alwa} T s means His glorified humanity; and that he considers this 
vivific virtue for the race as being generic in its nature, and the 
fountain thus of a new form of human nature. The Word, the true 
and proper life of the world, became flesh in Christ, that is, took 
humanity into union with itself, that our nature thus raised and 
quickened might be carried over afterwards into the persons of His 
people, transforming them into his own image, and making them 
meet for heaven. This requires of course an actual participation 
in His life, His flesh and His blood; that is, in His real humanit}-, 
which thus becomes the root and ground of all true life for the race. 
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is, therefore, especially in- 
tended to advance this object. It is the communion of the bocbv 
and blood of Christ. In partaking of the elements with proper 
faith we are brought by the power of the Holy Ghost into actual 
communication with His person, and made partakers of His full 
humanity as the true life for our fallen natures. Thus according 
to Calvin, we are not only reminded of Christ, not made to partake 
merely of His spirit 03- the Sacrament, but notwithstanding the 
distance that separates Him from us, as He is in heaven and we on 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 239 

earth, it serves to insert us more and more into His person, and to 
make us one with Him in the A r ery substance of His life." 

The position taken by Dr. Xevin that Calvin's view of the Lord's 
Supper was the doctrine of the Reformed Church was disputed at 
the time. This led to the publication of the " My stical Presence " in 
1846, and subsequently to the controversy with Dr. Charles Hodge, 
Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary in 1848, of which we 
shall speak more fully hereafter. Both had their root and origin 
in the articles we are here considering, written during the hot 
weather of August, 1845. 

After a full and exhaustive defense of himself against the two 
charges of serious error preferred against him as a professor of 
theology, Dr. Xevin went on to assault the castle from which the 
weapons were hurled against him, and he did it with no less vigor 
than when he stood merely on the defensive. His analysis of the 
spirit of a negative and false Protestantism is thorough, keen, and 
incisive; his description of its abnormal activity graphic, and his 
polemics generally so clear and forcible, that most persons of any 
degree of sensitiveness could tell whether any part of the language 
applied to their superficial system or not. 

"This particular case, just considered," he says, "is an exampli- 
fication of the spirit of a system, against which there is special 
need that the Church should be warned at this time. Without any 
inward hold on the life principles of the Reformation, it claims to 
be its most true and legitimate offspring on the ground simply of 
its blind negational zeal against all that belongs to Rome. Like 
every other movement of the same sort, whose essence holds in 
mere contradiction and destruction, it is fanatical, intolerant and 
unfree. Being of this character, as it includes no light, so it car- 
ries with it no power; that is, no power to do good, though it is 
sufficient for much evil. It wrongs the cause it affects to serve, 
and contributes most effectually in the end to build up the interest 
it seeks to pull down. There is no spirit whose general prevalence 
in the Church needs more to be deprecated. The salvation of 
Protestantism depends on its being preserved from the mastery of 
this false power. Its full triumph would seal the fate of the Ref- 
ormation, and make the whole work a failure. 

" At the same time it is becoming continually more clear that 
this false Protestantism is gaining ground in the Church, and that 
Romanism is waxing more rabid and fanatical of late in its bearing 
towards the Evangelical Church than has been the case since the 
period immediately following the Reformation. It is needless to 



240 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

multiply specifications of the various forms of the same general 
evil which may be seen to be actively at work in various directions. 
Low views of the Church ; low views of the sacraments ; small 
account of the living person of Christ compared with Christian 
doctrine ; a disposition to undervalue all history as an objective 
authority in any view ; a tendenc}' to resolve all religion into a 
mere naked spiritualism, without regard to the claims of the bod} T ; 
a blind misconception of the principle of authority ; all this and 
things of the same sort, we meet with plentifully. 

" It is truly surprising, when one is brought to contrast the Pres- 
ent with the Past in an intelligent form, to find at how many points 
ami to what a material extent much that now claims to be Protest- 
ant truth has come to differ from the Protestantism of the sixteenth 
century. In the last General Assembly, alreacby referred to, the 
argument against Romish Baptism was conducted, to a consider- 
able extent, on a view of the nature of the Church, which involved 
a similar sacrifice of the true Reformed theory in favor of the low- 
est independenc}^. The necessity of an organic historical connec- 
tion of the Christianity of our age with the Christian^ of all pre- 
ceding ages, back to the times of the Apostles, seemed by some 
not to be apprehended at all. This was carried so far even as the 
supposition, that the connection might be wholfy interrupted — run 
under ground, as it was said — for entire centuries ; leaving the 
Church in this way to take a new start as in the beginning from 
the Bible, and a self-sprung private piety. The Church is thus 
openl} T sunk to the conception of a mere aggregation of individuals ; 
and is represented to be something which may be wholly originated 
at any time de novo, if need be, by the activitj T of individual Chris- 
tianhry, holding no connection whatever with its previous life. In 
this country particularly, it is not to be denied that the Congrega- 
tional element, brought in through New England, has materially 
modified the current views of theolog3 r and the Church in every 
section of the Reformed communion, to say nothing of the Lu- 
theran, in the case of which the metamorphosis is more noticeable 
still. The S3 r stem of thought may be at home in Puritan Xew Eng- 
land, but it is not sound Presb^'terianism. 

" The spirit against which these articles are particular^ directed, 
while it is foreign to the true life of Protestantism in eveiy form, 
must be felt by all who are acquainted with the case to be most 
especially so to the true life of the German Reformed Church. 
Even if the whole Presb3 T terian body and our brethren of the Low 
Dutch communion should unfortunately be overpowered by the 



Chap. XXIII] pseudo-protestantism 241 

wrong tendency, which I trust, however, will never be the case, it 
would only be the more incumbent on our own denomination, 
although one of the least among the tribes of Israel, to stand fast 
by the old landmarks and resolutely reject every influence, whether 
from without or from within, that may tend to overthrow our 
denominational identity, as the most direct and legitimate succes- 
sion of the Reformed Church in these United States." 

Dr. Nevin wrote these articles with great dignity and earnestness 
throughout, losing sight in a great measure of his assailant in the 
discussion of what he regarded as high and important principles. 
In conclusion, confident in the position that he occupied, he main- 
tained that the charge of heresy or serious error lay not so much 
at his own door as at that of his opponent, Dr. Berg. The attack, 
taken in its connections, -had the form of a loud, solemn alarm, the 
object of which was to create the impression in the Church, that he 
had betrayed his official position as a theological professor by in- 
troducing "strange doctrines and Romanizing errors," which he re- 
garded as an "ecclesiastical libel." We have here given the drift 
of the articles in somewhat extended quotations, because, as facts 
of history, they are of general interest at the present da} T , and be- 
cause they will serve to prepare the mind of the reader for an in- 
telligent understanding of much that is to follow in these pages 
hereafter. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

ONE week after the last of the articles on Pseudo-Protestantism 
appeared in the Weekly Messenger, the Classis of Philadel- 
phia held its semi-annual meeting, at which a committee, with Dr. 
Berg as chairman, was appointed to examine the Principle of Prot- 
estantism, and to give its judgment of its character. The report 
consisted of five resolutions, which were supposed to constitute a 
short confession of the faith of the Classis, on what it regarded as 
points in dispute. The Committee affirmed that the Scriptures 
were the only rule of faith and practice, and that the Bible was 
not to be undervalued under any circumstances in favor of human 
addition or tradition ; that faith in Christ is the life-giving prin- 
ciple of Christianity, and that under no circumstances may the 
efficacy of the sacraments be represented as superior to that of 
faith ; that the sentiment that the sacraments do not depend for 
their efficac} r upon the spiritual state of the receiver, as contraven- 
ing the great truth that the sacraments without faith are unavail- 
ing, as in the case of Judas ; that we derive our religious life from 
Christ by the truth through the quickening influence of the Spirit; 
and that whilst the ordinances of the Church are channels through 
which blessings are conveyed, they cannot confer religious life ; 
and that Christ is not bodity, but onlj T spiritualty present with his 
people to the end of time. The last resolution gathers up the doc- 
trine of the Classis in regard to the Lord's Supper under the fol- 
lowing points : that this institution is intended to remind us of 
Christ's death until He come ; that His presence is not corporeal 
as it was in the days of His flesh ; that it is not human, but divine 
and spiritual ; and that in all cases in which the flesh and blood of 
Christ are said to be received in the Supper, the language is to be 
understood s^-mbolically and not literally. 

After the adoption of these resolutions another was added, affirm- 
ing that inasmuch as it was believed by many that sentiments con- 
trary to the above essential doctrines of God's word were inculcated 
in a work entitled the Principle of Protestantism, the attention of 
the Synod be called to the work in question. These sweeping reso- 
lutions were adopted by a two-third vote. The minorit}' contented 
themselves with simply putting on record their testimony that the 
Principle of Protestantism did not teach any heretical principles, 

(242) 



Chap. XXIY] classis of east Pennsylvania 243 

or doctrines contrary to the faith of the Reformed Church, leaving 
it to the Synod to decide whether the Classis was striking at facts 
or at a man of straw. But then, as if to make assurance doubly 
sure and to relieve themselves of all further responsibility for what 
they regarded as dangerous heresy, the majority adopted one more 
article of faith, offered by the Rev. Jacob Helfenstein. 

Resolved, That in accordance with the general sentiments of the 
Protestant Church, we regard the Papal System as the great apos- 
tacy under the Christian dispensation, "the man of sin," "the mys- 
tery of iniquitj^," " the mother of abomination of the earth," and, as 
such, destined to utter and fearful destruction. See 1 Tim. 4 : 1-3, 
2 Thess. 1 : T-12, 2 Thess. 2 : 3-4, 2 Thess. 1 : 8, and Rev. 18th and 
1 9th chapters. This declaration was for the- benefit especially of 
Dr. Schaff, who thought that on this point he was in sympathy with 
the Protestant Church in Germany at least. It is here given in 
full as it will serve to throw light on the nature of the pending con- 
troversy, and furnish the stand-point of a considerable fraction of 
well meaning Protestants in this country at the time. It is not 
likely, however, that it would have been adopted by the Protestant- 
ism of both hemispheres generally. 

Soon after the adjournment of the Classis of Philadelphia, the 
Classis of East Pennsylvania held a special meeting in Northamp- 
ton county, and among its items of business was one that had refer- 
ence to the charges against the Professors at Mercersburg. The 
members were nearly all German pastors, serving large charges, ad- 
advanced in years and experience, upright, full of integrity and love 
for their Church, conservative and not without solid learning, such 
as Pomp, Hoffeditz, Becker, Hess, Dubbs, Zuilch and others. In 
man}- respects they represented fully the spirit and traditions of 
their Church, as these had come from their learned predecessors who 
had come from Germany. They lived mostly in rural districts and 
were to some extent separated by language and circumstances from 
the outside world of thought ; but " as they had been diligently sup- 
plied with papers, in which the Professors' sentiments were misrepre- 
sented and then severely condemned, they were prepared to act 
intelligently — with both sides of the question before them." After 
due reflection and examination of the published views of the Pro- 
fessors, on motion of Dr. Jacob Christian Becker, a learned teacher 
of theology, the venerable fathers decided that "those views rightly 
understood fully agreed with the prevailing sentiments of the 
Church and that the Professors had been unjustry and unconstitu- 
tionally attacked; that the Roman Catholic Church had always 



244: AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

been regarded in some sense as a part of the Christian Church, 
although exceedingly corrupt; and that the modern English Puritan 
view of the Lord's Supper is as far from the doctrine of the Re- 
formed Church, and of its apprehension of the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, as that which Luther illustrated with the red-hot iron." The 
delegates to Synod were accordingly instructed to express the 
views of the Classis at the approaching meeting of the Synod in 
regard to all questions that were in dispute. 

In the meantime, the Principle of Protestantism was discussed 
in the papers from both points of view ; by Dr. Nevin, in an exhaust- 
ive article in defence of Dr. Schaff on Protestantism, and lry others 
in a somewhat alarmist stjde. as if the Address were a Pandora's 
box. Dr. Elias Heiner, of Baltimore, feared that " the Church was 
on the eve of a rupture. It was being agitated by the dissemination 
of views, and the discussions of questions, which no one, a year 
ago, even imagined would ever disturb our peace." Most of the 
Presbyterian papers took sides with Dr. Berg, whilst Episcopal 
papers noticed the Inaugural favorably, and even Catholic and 
Unitarian organs regarded it as a work of merit, which, with some 
nervous people, was sufficient to condemn it at once. It was a 
period of no little excitement, something like an ecclesiastical c} T - 
clone in the Reformed Church which extended considerably beyond 
its own boundaries. Dr. Kurtz, probably still smarting under the 
blows he had received in a former controversy, gave aid and com- 
fort to Dr. Berg and his friends, as a matter of course ; but he rep- 
resented only a part of his denomination, and the Lutherans, per- 
haps as a whole, sustained the Mercersburg Professors, fully con- 
scious that the battle ra^ingr on the Reformed side would inure to 
their benefit, something which turned out to be the case. Thev 
were the most interested and disinterested spectators, and some of 
them admiring Dr. Schaff's learning and ability expressed the wish 
that they might have Dr. Schaff, or some one like him, to help them 
fight out their own battles. 

The Synod met in the old town of York, in Central Pennsylvania, 
and the representative men of the Church were in attendance with 
many others. The advisory members, brought together by a com- 
mon interest in the meeting, exceeded in number the regular dele- 
gates. Corresponding delegates from sister Churches, Lutheran, 
Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian, were also present and took their 
seats on the floor of Synod. The action of the Classis of Philadel- 
phia in due season came up through the report of the Committee 
on Classical minutes, and was classified among irregularities. It 



Chap. XXIV] the synod of york 245 

was properly maintained that charges, or charges virtually implied, 
affecting the standing or orthodox}^ of theological professors, ought 
first to be brought before the Board of Yisitors of the Seminary for 
adjudication, and in case their judgment should not be regarded as 
satisfactory, then an appeal to Synod for its decision could be 
legally made. This was regarded as a necessary safeguard to pro- 
tect the reputation of the Professors. If a Classis could make 
charges against them, spread them before the world in the public 
prints, and argue the case before the Synod was called on to con- 
sider the case, then all ecclesiastical order would be at an end ; and 
this view of the case was sustained by the Synod. The Professors, 
however, were unwilling to take advantage of a mere technicality, 
and requested the Synod to allow the prosecution to proceed, which 
was granted. They had been arraigned before the bar of public 
opinion, and they wished to defend themselves before the only 
tribunal to which the}^ were amenable, against what they regarded 
as unjust and false attacks against their theological standing in the 
Church. 

The action of Classis was accordingly taken out of the column 
of irregularities and placed among the requests of the Classes, 
and as such it came before the Synod for its consideration. 
Thereupon it was referred to a committee, of which Dr. Bernard C, ; 
Wolff was chairman, consisting of eleven members; one from each 
of the ten Classes, and one from the Reformed Synod of Ohio. It 
was understood that after the report was presented for adoption or 
rejection, the way would be opened for discussion, and a wide range 
allowed for considering the character of the book which had been 
attacked. The report was prepared by the chairman, for which he 
was well qualified. He was a man of more than ordinary ability, 
of learning sanctified by a pious life, possessed of good judgment, 
known throughout the Church as conscientious in regard to sound- 
ness of doctrine, and considered by many as a standard of ortho- 
doxy; and so it came to be felt that as long as he did not tremble 
for the ark, others had no occasion to fear for its safety. His 
report was able and exhaustive. It skilfully analyzed the action 
of the Philadelphia Classis, brought out clearly the charges of 
errors which it had brought against the book under consideration, 
and showed by copious quotations that they were not sustained by 
the text, that they were mere inferences, nonsequiturs, or gross ex- 
aggerations, and that the "action of the majority of Classis was 
marked by an entire absence of consideration and forethought in 
bringing them forward in their unauthorized way." 



246 . AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

The Inaugural had defined tradition under three divisions ; ritual 
tradition, which comprises the ancient customs of the Church per- 
taining to order and worship ; historical, which refers to the testi- 
mony of Christian antiquity in favor of the genuineness of the 
sacred books; the dogmatic moral, comprehending doctrines as- 
cribed to Christ or the Apostles which the book rejects; and the 
formal dogmatic tradition, including the Apostles' Creed, the oec- 
umenical creeds of Nice and Athanasius, the onward development 
of Church doctrine and Church life from age to age, to which must 
be added the Protestant S}nnbols, which express the faith of Prot- 
estantism or its apprehension of the contents of the Scriptures. 
"The Roman tradition on the other hand," says Dr. Schaff, "is the 
Pandora box from the lid of which has escaped all the corruptions, 
abuses and superstitions which have afflicted the Church." But 
whilst valid tradition is of great importance and value to the Church, 
and under its formal dogmatical form relatively indispensable, he, 
as the professed defender of Protestantism, nevertheless asserts 
with emphasis that the Word of God is the highest norm and rule 
by which to measure all human truth, all ecclesiastical tradition, 
and all synodical decrees. In the light of statements such as these, 
the report alleged "that the resolution of the Classis, implying that 
the book denied that the Scriptures were the only rule of faith ; 
that it did not regard the Scripture as fundamental to the exist- 
ence of Christianity; and that it undervalued the Scripture in favor 
of human tradition, was not justified by the facts in the case." 

The allegation that it denied that faith is the life-giving principle 
of Christianity, is contradicted bj T the fact that the author makes 
justification by faith the material principle of the Reformation. 
If the Classis had said that Christ himself is such a life-giving 
principle it would have expressed a better theology. Dr. Schaff, 
in one place, speaking of the extreme subjectivity of the age, had 
said that " the sacraments have been forgotten or practically un- 
dervalued in favor of faith," which to the Classis seemed to affirm 
that the efficacj' of the sacraments was superior to faith, which 
was a manifest non sequitur. Incidentally, in another place, he had 
spoken of "the importance of the sacraments as objective institu- 
tions, that hang not in the precarious state of the subject," and this 
was supposed to contravene the'' great truth, that the sacraments 
without faith are unavailing. But the committee could see no 
sentiment to the contrary after a careful examination of the book 
itself. "As objective institutions, appointed by Christ Himself, have 
they no force or efflcac}- in themselves ? Is there no inward grace 



Chap. XXIY] the synod of york 247 

or power of which they are the outward signs, according to the 
doctrine of the Reformed Churches generally ? Are the sacraments 
mere forms and ceremonies, and if so, whence proceeds their vir- 
tue, which the recip'ent experiences subjectively by the exercise 
of faith ?" 

The fourth resolution of Classis affirmed that it was a funda- 
mental doctrine that Christians derive their religious life from 
Christ by the Truth, through the quickening influence of the Spirit, 
and that the ordinances of the Church, although channels through 
which blessings are conveyed, cannot confer grace. But the com- 
mittee, after diligent search, could not find anj^thing in the Inau- 
gural that taught the contrary of these statements. It even em- 
phasized the necessity of faith in Christ, "in order that the con- 
tents of Scripture might live in the heart by the power of the 
Holy Ghost accompanying the Word, and that the works of the be- 
liever are good only as they are wrought in Him and through Him 
by the Spirit of God." 

The last resolution, as we have seen, makes the Lord's Supper 
simply a memorial of Christ's sufferings and death, affirms that the 
presence of Christ in His Sacrament is no longer human, but only 
divine and spiritual, and asserts that in all cases in which the Flesh 
and Blood of Christ are received in the Supper, the language is to 
be understood symbolically and not literalty. But it so turned out 
that the book nowhere discussed the Sacrament of the Supper. 
Incidentally in one place it speaks of the "importance of the 
Sacraments as including a living actual presence of Christ for the 
purpose they are intended to secure, as real as that by which He 
stood among His disciples in the days of His flesh." The Philadel- 
phia brethren consequently made for themselves a man of straw in 
order, as it seems, that they might get the credit of demolishing it 
with their ecclesiastical thunder. They, however, were well aware 
that the Professors held much higher views of the Holy Eucharist 
than they, and rightly concluded that they were somewhere hidden 
in the book, or involved in their teachings in regard to the Church. 
Here there was a wide difference, and the last complaint of the clas- 
sical brethren, although technically without any foundation in fact, 
was allowed to stand in its place in their report. It gave the Synod 
and the Professors an opportunity to discuss not only the Church 
Question in general, but also the Sacramental Question in particular. 
It added much interest to the debate and proved to be highly edify- 
ing to all who listened to it. 

The Committee concluded their report by saying that it was their 



248 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

unanimous judgment that there was nothing in the book to justify 
the charges preferred against the Professors, or lead to the sus- 
picion or fear that they were disposed to depart from the true 
Protestant stand-point; that fairly understood it was well calcu- 
lated to promote the true interests of religion, and entitled the 
authors to the respect and affectionate regards of the Protestant 
community; that they deserved and should receive the warmest 
sympathy and cordial support of the friends of the Church in their 
earnest and untiring efforts to build up her Institutions and to 
advance her honor and welfare ; and that it was a matter of regret 
that the Philadelphia Classis did not pursue the course indicated 
by the Constitution and sanctioned by the customs of the Church, 
in bringing to the notice of the Synod their complaints against the 
Theological Professors. 

The report brought the whole subject before the Sjnod and a 
time was appointed for its consideration. The discussions, which 
lasted several days, were conducted with the utmost decorum and 
seriousness and were listened to b}^ crowded houses. Dr. Berg, 
who was a master of sarcasm himself, cheerfully acceded to Dr. 
Nevin's request that everything of a personal or offensive character 
should be omitted in their speeches. Seldom, if ever, perhaps, was 
a warm theological debate carried forward with greater dignity or 
fewer appeals to vulgar prejudice. The ultra-Protestant feeling of 
the community was largely represented, and more or less in sym- 
pathy with the Classis and its representatives, but there was a large 
German element on hand which wished to hear who had the better 
side of the argument and were therefore thoughtful, discriminating 
listeners. Dr. Berg was a rhetorician, an elocutionist and a pleasant 
speaker, one who would arrest attention in any audience. Dr. 
iVevin was a logician, a learned theologian, and a speaker whose 
deep base tones of voice, with an occasional stoppage in his speech, 
as if his words were inadequate to the array of thoughts that de- 
manded expression, was well calculated to secure the attention of 
those who valued the sense of things more than the sound of words. 
He was at this time not 3^et forty-three 3'ears of age, with a classic 
head, a forehead marked with the deep lines of thought, flashing 
e3'es, and a vigorous growth of dark hair. As he stood before the 
Synod, and in his own commanding way discussed the deepest ques- 
tions in theology, he would have presented a model that a painter or 
sculptor might have coveted. It is said that in the midst of an 
earnest discussion, with only a slight tinge of color in his face, an 
intense listener involuntarily remarked to his neighbor, "• See. be- 



Chap. XXIV] the synod of york 249 

hold the marble man." His address on this occasion was purely 
extemporaneous, and no notes were taken of its contents by in- 
dividuals or reporters at the time. The substance of his remarks, 
however, will be found in this volume in what he said or wrote at 
other times concerning Tradition, the Sacraments, the Mystical 
Union, the Church Question, and other relative topics. 

As a matter of course Dr. Schaff, who was more immediately re- 
sponsible for the book that was on trial, took a prominent part in 
the discussions. He was considerably younger than Dr. Xevin, 
and received invaluable assistance from his American colleague, in 
his new surroundings in this country, on the floor of an American 
Synod. He was teeming with learning, quick in calling his knowl- 
edge into requisition, full of enthusiasm for German theology, and 
alwa}rs ready to defend his Inaugural at whatever point the attack 
was made. At that time he was not yet able to express himself 
freely in the English language, and if he was at a loss for a word, 
his brethren around him were quick to supply him with the right 
one. He made a favorable impression upon the ministers generally, 
and confirmed them in their opinion that the Synod had been 
guided by a higher wisdom than their own in transferring him from 
the University of Berlin to the Theological Seminary at Mercers- 
burg. 

The discussion continued for two whole days, including the even- 
ing sessions, in which the ministerial delegates and elders alike took 
part and expressed themselves freety. When the vote on the 
adoption of the Committee's report came to be taken, it was found, 
that forty members voted in the affirmative; and three, including 
Dr. Berg and two elders, in the negative, with one non-liquet. Dr. 
Berg was then allowed to enter a long protest on the minutes of 
the Synod, concluding with the memorable words of Martin Luther 
at the Diet of Worms : " Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders, 
Gott helfe mir," which in the circumstances were, of course, re- 
garded by some at least as carrying in them more of bathos than of 
pathos. A reply to the Protest was prepared by a Committee of 
the Synod, of which the Rev. J. H. A. Bomberger, one of the 
younger members, was chairman, which was also ordered to be put 
on record. Thus ended a contest in which Logic gained a signal I 
victory over Rhetoric; and the historical life of the Reformed 
Church over the unchurchly, ultra-protestant elements which here 
sought to come in and guide the vessel of an old historic church. 

The action of the Synod at York was an epoch full of significance. 
Composed as this body w T as of representative ministers and elders, 
16 



250 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

with a large number of advisory members in sympathy with it, it 
expressed clearly the mind of the Church at large in regard to the 
issue here made. It affirmed distinctly that the Professors at 
Mercer sburg would be sustained and protected in their course, 
against any further trial or Synodical action for the theological 
views which they thus far had advanced. The whole subject, here 
earnestly and fully discussed on the floor of Synod, was thus re- 
moved from the ecclesiastical tribunal and passed over into the 
arena of theological discussion. The controversy, as we shall see, 
continued for a number of years afterwards, but under all its various 
phases, it embraced substantially the principles and views discussed 
on the floor of the Synod of York. What came to be called the 
" Mercer sburg Theology " grew out of the ideas and doctrines em- 
bodied in the Principle of Protestantism, its Introduction and the 
Sermon on Catholic Unity, in more or less logical order, and carried 
with it, as far as it was consistent with these first principles, the 
protection of Synod. At times when the debate ran high and ex- 
aggerated fears were honestly entertained or unwisely encouraged as 
regards where it would end, outsiders, brethren in other churches, 
wondered why the matter was not settled at once; and at times un- 
called for reflections were made upon the Church itself. But the 
S}mod had done its part, and its liberality in allowing its profes- 
sors to discuss the profound theological questions of the times with 
the amplest freedom, must appear now to disinterested persons as 
inuring to its credit rather than to any want of fidelity to its trust. 
The Heidelberg Catechism, the basis of its faith, is broad, liberal, 
catholic, and allows of more freedom for diversity of opinion on 
controverted points than most other religious confessions. A con- 
troversj^, therefore, that might have been suppressed, in some other 
denominations, disgraceful to its leaders on the one side or the 
other, was in the nature of the case allowed to take its course in 
the Reformed Church, and each one of its distinguished and 
laborious professors was allowed to stand rectus in Ecclesia. It 
may be proper to add that the large array of ministers and elders, 
who supported the cause of progress and theological development 
at York, with few exceptions, remained true to their professions, 
and in other battle fields sustained the professors in their work. 
The fathers nearly all have fallen asleep, and the sons have now 
become the fathers in the Church. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE Principle of Protestantism, whilst it was on trial before 
the S} T nocl and afterwards, was extensively noticed by the re- 
ligious papers and quarterlies, and its merits criticised favorably 
or unfavorably according to the stand-point or calibre of the re- 
viewer. It was at a period when German theology was not gener- 
ally understood in this country. Up to this time unfortunately 
much of it that had crossed the ocean was of questionable ortho- 
doxy, or decidedly rationalistic, and so as a whole it came to be 
regarded with more or less suspicion. Dr. Schaff's first production, 
however, whilst it was one of ability and learning, was pervaded 
throughout with an evangelical spirit and regard for orthodoxy. It 
therefore commanded the attention of earnest and profound think- 
ers as well as of such as were superficial. The Princeton Review 
was among the first to give it a respectful notice, which was pub- 
lished in the Messenger, immediately after the proceedings of the 
Synod at York were given to the public. " The importance of the 
subject of which the book treated," said the reviewer, "the ability 
it displaj-ed and the attention which it excited, all claimed for it 
an elaborate review, but circumstances, beyond the control of the 
writer, shut him up to the necessity of confining himself to a short 
notice." The writer, Dr. Charles Hodge, complains that the 
book, on account of its decidedly German character, was to him 
difficult to understand. He had read the whole of it over twice., 
and was far from being satisfied that he adequately comprehended 
it, especially that part of it which proceeded from the pen of Dr. 
Nevin. Of course the language was pure English, but the thoughts 
of both writers were certainly German. 

The reviewer accordingly confines himself mainly to criticisms 
on some of the details of the book. He thinks that Dr. Schaff 
unduly magnifies the evils of the sect-system in this country. He 
also joins issue with him in reference to the comparative evils of 
Rationalism and Romanism. " With reference to the state of the 
Church in this country, Romanism is immeasurably more danger- 
ous than infidelity." In Germany and Europe theologians regard- 
ed the latter as the greater of the two evils. Dr. Hodge admitted 
the principle of historical development as advocated by Dr. Schaff, 
although he apprehended it most likely from a somewhat different 

(251) 



252 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

point of view. " It is very plain," he says, " from this brief analysis 
of the book before us, that the impression that Dr. Kevin and Prof. 
Schaff are tending towards Puseyism, if b}^ Puse}usin be meant 
prelacy and Rome, and what is necessarily connected with them, 
is altogether unfounded. It would be suicidal in them, and entires- 
opposed to all their principles to step out of the line of historical 
development. In all this there is a great deal that is due to the 
peculiar philosophical and theological training of the writer ; much 
that we do not understand and much with which we do not agree. 
And yet there is much that is healthful and encouraging." 

It is somewhat remarkable that the Princeton reviewer made no 
reference to any position advanced by Dr. Nevin, either in the In- 
troduction to the book or in the Sermon which served as an appen- 
dix. To have done so would have required a discussion of the 
whole subject which the limits of the article precluded. It was 
evident that Dr. Kevin had outgrown his Princeton training, and 
the reviewer probably thought best to suspend an}- criticism of his 
views until it was seen more clearly where he intended to land. 
His remarks, however, in regard to German theologians and phil- 
osophers in general, without exceptions to any of them in particu- 
lar, was doubtless intended no less for Dr. Nevin 's benefit than for 
that of his colleague. "We are afraid," he says, "of their con- 
founding all the landmarks of truth, of leading men to see no differ- 
ence between holiness and truth, sin and defect, fate and providence, 
a self conscious universe and our Father who is in heaven." This 
we suppose was regarded as a sufficient reply for the time being. " It 
is an immense error," Dr. Nevin had said, "that the Anglo-Ameri- 
can order of religious life is all right, and the German life all wrong. 
What is needed is a judicious union of both, in which the true and 
good on the one side shall find its proper supplement in the true 
and good on the other side, and one-sided extremes stand mutually 
corrected and reciprocally restrained. Realism and Idealism, prac- 
tice and theory, are both, separately taken, unsound and untrue. 
Our religious life and practice can be sound and strong, only in 
connection with a living, vigorous theology, which to be thus living 
and vigorous must be more than traditional. And if there be one 
country in the whole compass of the Church, where at this moment 
orthodox theology'is not dead, but full of life and power, that coun- 
try is Germany, the land of Luther and the glorious Reformation. 
We niay hope then that it will be found sufficient for its own work. 
If accomplished at all, it will be a work for the whole Christian 
world ; and we awe it to ourselves at least, to be willing to take ad- 



Chap. XXV] the biblical repository 253 

vantage of it in its progress and to employ it for the improvement 
of our own position, if it can be so used. Thus much I have 
thought it proper to state on this point, merely to counteract, if 
possible, the poor prejudice that some may feel towards the present 
work, simply because of its German source and German complexion; 
as if all must needs be either rationalistic or transcendental, that 
breathes a thought in common with Hegel, or owns a feeling in 
sympathy -with the gifted, noble Schleiermacher." 

Other quarterly Reviews at the time noticed the new book, more 
or less favorably, and for the most part without any attempt to dis- 
cuss its underlying principles, or to grapple earnestly with the 
great Church Question for the solution of which it was intended as 
an humble contribution. But to this remark there was at least one 
honorable exception. At the same time the article was published 
in the Princeton Review, another article appeared in the Biblical 
Repository , the principal organ of the New School Theology, which 
for the times and in the circumstances was in all respects a very 
remarkable one. Its author, Professor Taylor Lewis, was a lawyer 
by profession, but had devoted most of his attention to teaching, 
first in classical schools, and was at this time professor of Greek 
in the University of New York. He subsequently became profes- 
sor of the Greek language, instructor in the oriental languages, and 
lecturer on Biblical and Oriental Literature at Union College, his 
Alma Mater. He was probably the most learned theologian among 
laymen in his day, as his books and contributions to theological 
literature would seem to indicate. He was one year older than Dr. 
Nevin, had graduated at Schenectady one year before he did, was a 
Christian Platonist, and a devout member of the Dutch Reformed 
Church. His review of the Principle of Protestantism was con- 
ceived in a broad and liberal spirit, and was decidedly the ablest 
and fairest that appeared at the time. 

The writer goes on to say that "the Sermon and Introduction of 
Dr. Nevin are pervaded throughout with the same spirit and advo- 
cate substantially the same views as the Inaugural; in connection, 
however, with another topic, which may be regarded as the central 
truth, or, as some would say, the central error, that gives coherence 
and consistency to all the other opinions advanced. This is the 
doctrine of the real and vital, instead of a mere moral or figurative, 
union of believers to Christ. In close connection with this, is Dr. 
Xevin's peculiar view of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist ; 
in which ordinance, this union, although not created, is supposed 
to be strengthened and perfected in a special manner. We say, Dr. 



254 AT VEERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

Nevin's peculiar view, because so regarded by most Protestants at 
the present day, although, as he contends, it maj' be found in nearly 
all the articles drawn up at the Reformation, and now forming the 
avowed standards of almost all our Orthodox Protestant Churches. 
Both writers, although viewing it from different positions, agree 
in regarding the Church Question as the great question of the day, 
and as by no means finding its proper solution in the present state 
of the Protestant denominations. In regard to ultra-Protestantism 
with its rationalizing and sectarian tendencies, both writers use 
language which may perhaps be thought to resemble what has been 
emplo}'ed by Pusejutes and even Romanist writers. This, however, 
as we think, is more in appearance than reality. However extrava- 
gant their doctrine in regard to the Church and the Sacraments 
may seem to some, in one thing it differs essentially and fundament- 
ally from that of Rome or Oxford. AVe refer to the dogma of a 
mediating priesthood, which essentially changes the nature of the 
Church, and instead of exalting, actually degrades the Eucharist. 
Of this we find no traces in the work before us ; and this alone 
creates an impassable gulf between the writers and those with whom 
they are, by some, confounded. They claim to be true, zealous and 
earnest Protestants — warm friends of the Reformation; and in a 
careful examination, we are disposed to concede to them this char- 
acter in its fullest extent. They may be mistaken in some, even in 
many points, and in the chief of their positions, but of this one thing 
we have no doubt, the} T are honest Protestants, as sincere as any of 
those who would charge them with such Puse3 T ite tendencies, and 
perhaps it may appear, more consistent than some who assume to 
be the great champions of the cause of the Reformation. 

" Is Protestantism perfect ? If no man will dare to say this, why 
should we call in question the sincerity of those professed friends 
of the Reformation, who contend that, in setting forth its ultra- 
tendencies, they are rendering the very best possible service to the 
cause they are charged with assailing ? If it be said that in the 
present critical strife, it is unsafe to speak even in the most gentle 
terms of any defects or false tendencies belonging to our own side 
of these most momentous questions, we demur to any such posi- 
tion, as either just in itself or founded on an}' true notion of policy. 
If we are on the eve of a tremendous conflict, our first business 
should be to examine, if there are any weak points in our own posi- 
tion — not to proclaim them to the enemy, but that they niay be rem- 
edied before the whole cause, with its immense over-balancing ben- 
efits, is therelry put in jeopardy. 



Chap. XXV] the biblical repository 255 

" This is the position assumed by Prof. Schaff and Dr. Nevin. 
Nothing can be more purely evangelical than the manner in which 
Prof. Schaff sets forth that great article of Justification b}^ Faith, 
in the positive announcement of which, as he contends, consisted 
the historical development of the Reformation ; constituting it a 
real state of progress in the historical consciousness of the Church ; 
a step from which, according to his peculiar theory, the Church can 
never recede. We think there is some degree of error and incon- 
sistenc3 T in this theory of progress and development, of which our 
author is so fond. It is, however, sufficient for our present pur- 
pose to observe that the doctrine must forever place an impassable 
barrier between him and both branches of the anti-Protestant party, 
the one utterly disregarding the Reformation as a mere historical 
negative in the history of the Church ; the other viewing it as a 
step, perhaps necessary, but which, having fulfilled its mission, must 
now speedily be retraced. If Prof. Schaff and Dr. JSTevin are sincere 
in this — and it seems to be not merely held but to constitute their 
favorite and darling dogma— then they must be among the last, if 
not the very last, in the Protestant ranks, to admit the thought of 
any return to Rome, or of any alliance with that heartless imita- 
tion of Rome, which has its seat at Oxford." 

With these introductory remarks, the Professor proceeds to dis- 
cuss the Church Question, the main object of his article, with re- 
markable freedom, ability, and composure of mind. He was not a 
theological professor, was unhampered by his surroundings, and 
spoke out his mind freely. In the main he agreed with the Mercers- 
burg professors, and did them full justice in pointing out what was 
certainly not their meaning. " Christianity," he said, " is not merely 
a S3 r stem of religious truth, however sublime and elevated. It is 
not a school, but a life ; not a mere invisible power, be it regarded 
as ever so refined, spiritual, or even supernatural; but an outward 
society standing in the strongest visible contrast to the world, and 
realizing the full import of that most significant phrase — the King- 
dom of Heaven. Christ intended to establish a community designed 
to be a visible, perpetual, one and universal, a community which, 
although most simple in its structure, should nevertheless have an 
efficient organization and a true government, clothed not merelv 
with moral but official authority — in other words, a visible com- 
munion of Himself as of a common life, and not a union arising 
from the same or varying views of a common 'professed philosophy." 
The claims of the Papal and Episcopal hierarchy to be such a com- 
munion or Church has been set aside by history and has not yet 



256 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

been properly realized in the Protestant Churches of Europe or 
America. The divisions in these continue, although the Professor 
thinks that Dr. Schaff had magnified the evils of our sectarian divis- 
ion unduly, because although we have different denominations they 
are more united than Dr. Schaff supposed — and as he himself was 
no doubt happy to learn after a longer residence in this country. 

"It must, however, be admitted," says the Professor, "that in our 
own times there are, throughout Protestant Christendom, some 
grounds for the alarm raised by Professor Schaff. Whilst the false 
love of the hierarchy, taking the guise of love for the Church, may 
be waxing stronger in some bodies, the true Church feeling is de- 
caying in others, where it once was cherished. Especially is this 
the case in our own land, and here there is every appearance of a 
crisis. The Church dogma and the Church feeling seem both des- 
tined to be severely tested. Not only are these new bodies con- 
tinuing separate from the old, on altogether slight and inadequate 
grounds, but there are cases arising among us of associations in 
the strictest sense voluntary — self constituted — claiming no con- 
tinuous derivation from any others, and although calling themselves 
Churches, acknowledging no higher obligation, and no higher life 
for their pretended organisms, than avowedly belong to a temper- 
ance or moral reform society. These things ought to show us 
whither we are tending. If there is — and who can read the New 
Testament and doubt it ? — one universal and visible Church, in dis- 
tinction from a school or schools of philosophy — a Church most 
dear to the Apostles and first disciples of the Lord, and to the 
unity of which they attached the utmost importance — then certainly 
we have gone too far in this country to the unchurchly extreme. 
If there are such things as schism and criminal sectarianism, we 
are in great danger of becoming guilty of them. We ought, there- 
fore, to be thankful to those who sound the alarm, instead of charg- 
ing them with Romish tendencies for so doing. The first thing, 
and the great thing, is to attempt to revive a true Church feeling, 
and when this is warmly cherished in every department of our 
broken Zion, and each section begins to feel that it is incomplete, 
and deprived of a portion of its true life, as long as it is not in 
true Church relations with other Christian bodies, then one step 
towards a blessed consummation has been taken. When the heart 
has been prepared, God imiy provide the way. If the soil be thus 
prepared, how easy it would be for Him so to raise the spiritual 
temperature by an outpouring of the Spirit of life as well as of 
truth that all sects, not even leaving out of the estimate the arro- 



Chap. XX V J the biblical repository 257 

gant spirit of Oxford, or the subjects of Romish tyranny, should 
melt and flow into one." 

Having discussed the Church Question as viewed by Dr. Schaff 
from the stand-point of history, the reviewer goes on to consider it 
in its connection with the mystical union of believers with Christ 
as set forth b} T Dr. Nevin in his discourse on Catholic unity. With 
much force and grasp of thought he handles this mysterious sub- 
ject in harmony with the Sermon, presenting it in a new and inter- 
esting light, and in a st3 7 le remarkably lucid and sweet. Church 
unity and the union of believers with Christ the head go together, 
the former always flowing from the latter as a necessary result ; 
unless its free operation is prevented by counteracting influences 
such as rationalism or unbelief. 

" The doctrine of such a union was certainly maintained most 
strenuously by the Reformers, and although it has in a measure 
fallen out of our modern theology or its importance been under- 
valued, it still enters largely into the feelings of all true Christians. 
It is acknowledged in most of our Protestant standards, and the 
great name of Calvin would in itself be sufficient to defend any one 
from heresy who should maintain it. 

" The earliest Church Fathers are full of it. It seems to be the 
pervading spirit of their writings. We meet with it in every aspect 
of the Primitive Church. Its martyrs proclaim it at the stake. 
The profane world around them stood amazed at a doctrine so 
wonderful, so new; such godless scoffers as Lucian and Celsus rep- 
resent it as one of their absurd and incomprehensible dogmas. 
'The Christians,' says one of them in derision, 'believe that Christ 
lives in them, and that they literally carry their God within their 
hearts.' 

" There is the same abundant scriptural support for this doctrine 
as there is for that of justification by faith. No more common is 
it for Paul to speak of our being saved by the blood of Christ than 
of our being in Christ. He tells us expressly we are members of 
His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. Most wonderful language 
truly! No such usus loquendi had ever before been employed in 
the Old Testament. The language is entirely new. It was foreign 
to any previous system of religion. It was utterly unknown both 
to philosophy and theology. The expression in Moses would have 
sounded as strange to the Jew as in Socrates to the Greek. This 
mode of speech meets us for the first time in some of the declara- 
tions of our Lord, and then the Apostles, especially Paul, are full 
of it. 



258 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

" From the great prominence given to the life of Christ, especially 
in the writings of John, may we not conclude that Jesus becomes 
our effectual teacher, and our real atoning sacrifice, because He pre- 
viously became our life? The mystical union, which we believe to 
be taught in such expressions, would not then be the result, but the 
ground of the imputation of His righteousness. 

" In short, the doctrine of the language to which we have so large- 
ly referred, we believe to be this: that there is between Christ and 
the believer, not merely a moral, nor even a spiritual union alone, 
as this latter term is often used in distinction from real and actual : 
but a real union in the highest sense of that term. We would say 
a physical union, had not that word been so greatly abused. It is, 
in other words, an inter-communion of spirit with spirit, directly 
and not through the media of truth, or inflowings of something 
which is neither truth nor spirit. It may be regarded as a union 
of nature with nature; by which, however incomprehensible the 
process, Christ's humanity becomes our humanity, in as true, 
and real, and intimate manner, as we are psychologically and an- 
thropologically united to Adam, the natural head of our race, from 
whom our natural humanity flows. To adopt another mode of ex- 
pression, Christianity in the soul is a new Life in the highest sense 
of that term, the meaning of which in modern theolog3 r is so apt to 
evaporate in figures. It is something below exercises, emotions, 
and thoughts, the very life of the Redeemer living in all the re- 
deemed, not as an effect or influence of truth or of some external 
power, but as an absolute independent indwelling life, as real as 
that old life which was imparted to Adam when he lay a passive 
and lifeless organism in the garden of Eden. 

"We wonder not that those who deny all psychological unity, as 
existing between us and Adam, who cleirv that we inherit from him 
a depraved nature, or that the sin of the first man is, in any sense, 
to be imputed to us or regarded as ours, or who have discarded 
the doctrine of original sin from theolog} T , we wonder not that 
such should see nothing but irrational mysticism in the tenet in 
question. It is, however, a matter of great surprise that those 
who rigidly maintain the opposite view on all these points, who 
hold to a real union with the first man, a real traduction from him 
of our whole natural life and our whole material humanit}^ by or- 
dinary generation, it is, we sa} T , a matter of great surprise that 
such should break the Apostle's analogy, should make a mere figure, 
or, at most, a mere moral influence of that regeneration by which 
the believer is transferred to a new life and grafted into the hu- 



Chap. XXY] the biblical repository 259 

inanity of the second Adam — the Lord from heaven. Both, in 
respect to the mode of explanation, may utterly transcend our 
highest understanding ; but, as a matter of fact, we cannot see 
why one should, in any sense, be regarded as mere figurative, or 
less real than the other. If we have, in theology, one more sure 
guide than another it is this favorite parallel which the Apostle is 
so fond of instituting between Christ and Adam. If original sin 
is something more than the following or the imitation of Adam, ' as 
the Pelagians do vainly talk, 1 then regeneration, union to Christ, 
living in Christ, and other similar expressions, must mean far more 
than being followers of Christ, or under the influence of truth re- 
vealed by His teaching, or being affected by His death, as a moral 
display of the Divine justice — or, in short, any external relation, 
however high or supernatural it may be. 

" We have dwelt on this because we believe with Dr. Nevin, that 
here is to be found the true ground of that churchly feeling, the 
resurrection of which is to be the great cure for our broken and dis- 
tracted Zion. There can be no hope that any system of truth, as 
mere truth, will effect this. The feeling of real union to Christ's 
humanity, and of real brotherhood in respect to each other, bound 
together the Christians of the primitive Church. In time, however, 
it became itself a dogma, instead of the life of all other truths, just 
as the great principle of the Reformers, justification by faith, sunk 
down in time into justification by belief in justification by faith. 
As a mere dogma it soon became allied to the false and pernicious 
doctrine of a priesthood, through which alone, it was believed, the 
life of Christ could be transmitted to the soul, and any true union 
with Him could be effected. Along with this came the profanation 
of that sacrament so vitally connected with the doctrine of the mys- 
tical union. Instead of being regarded as a sign of a reality, or 
symbolical of the union of Christ with all believers, or of the real 
presence of his humanity in their humanity, it was made subservient 
to ecclesiastical ambition, and its efficacy was held to depend on 
certain words and forms of consecration uttered by persons in a 
certain line of succession. 

" Still we believe it is a truth, which is clearly set forth in the 
writings of Calvin, and also in the Catechism and Articles of the 
Reformed Dutch Church, and what is of more account, that it is, 
and must be, a living principle in the hearts of all Evangelical 
Christians. What Churches exhibit more of the life of this truth? 
Who are more fond of those passages in the Scriptures, which 
speak of the union of Christ with believers? Compare their books 



260 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of devotion and experimental religion. Again, enter a Wesleyan 
prayer meeting : how fond are the truly pious there of talking of 
the Messed union with the Redeemer — of Christ formed within 
them the hope of glory. Listen to the experience of the newly re- 
generated. With what fondness do the new-born souls, when the} T 
first begin to speak the language of Heaven, turn to these expres- 
sions so thickly spread over the New Testament. The most illiter- 
ate of men haA^e been known thus to talk of being united to God 
and Christ, in a st3 T le that might remind us of Augustine or Thomas 
a Kempis. But what does all this prove, it may be said, as long as 
the expressions are regarded as figurative, and it is admitted that 
the corresponding dogma is not generally maintained? It shows, 
we reply, that the life ma}^ be stronger than the dogma. When, 
however, the doctrine wholly perishes, there is reason to fear that 
so far as communities are concerned, the life also ma} T go out, 
although it will never be lost from those individual souls in which 
it has once been kindled. 

" If the mystical union then be a real truth of Scripture, and if it 
be that from which theological truths derive their meaning and im- 
portance, it certainly should be placed in the front rank of theology. 
Especiall}- is it of moment in regard to this great and vexed ques- 
tion of the Church. Can the bod}" of Christ be otherwise than both 
spiritually and visibly one, when Christians universally believe and 
feel that they partake of one common life, instead of attempting to 
build their unity on a common s}^stem of truths; and will not a 
common system of truths, to an} T extent that may seem necessary 
or desirable, come, as a matter of course, to follow such a convic- 
tion of a common life in a common Redeemer?" 

But whilst the quarterly reviews were thus discussing the Prin- 
ciple of Protestantism and its contents, the discussion took a wide 
range in the religious newspapers of the day, and articles on the 
mystical union, the Eucharist and kindred topics, flew thick and 
fast through the Weekly Messenger. The paper literally groaned un- 
der the weight of longer or shorter theological essa3"s, and as there 
was no room for some objectionable ones, they were sent to the 
Christian Intelligencer ,the organ of the sister Reformed Church in 
New York. The writer of one of these articles attempted to show 
what the doctrine of the German Reformed Church on the Lord's 
Supper was, in which he stumbled at the idea that believers partake 
of the human as well as Divine nature of Christ, and regarded it 
"as something novel or at least unnecessarily mystical." The arti- 
cle happened to catch the ej T e of a Congregational minister some- 



Chap. XXY] the biblical repository 261 

where in Connecticut, who had clearer and more definite ideas in ref- 
erence to the subject. He therefore prepared a number of essays 
on the Eucharist, for the benefit of the stumbling writer and others 
of little faith. On account of their length, or for other reasons, 
they were not admitted into the Intelligencer, whereupon, by per- 
mission of the author, a respectable minister of the Reformed 
Dutch Church sent them to the Messenger for insertion. They 
appeared in four numbers of the paper/ showed superior learning, 
were about as long as Dr. Kevin's articles, were in striking har- 
mony with his views, evinced similar ability with his, and were 
read with more than ordinary avidity. As coming from the land 
of the Puritans they were phenomenal, showing that the sacra- 
mental question was studied in Connecticut in those days no less 
than in Pennsylvania. The writer signed himself W. W. A., which 
was understood to be the Rev. W. W. Andrews, now residing; at 

7 ■ . o 

Hartford, Conn., and occupying a high position in the "Catholic 
Apostolic Church " in this country. 

The respected writer proceeds to show that " no investigation is 
fundamental which does not start from the doctrine of the Word 
made Flesh, the central truth of Christianity, which is the key to the 
right understanding of the Church, and the power of its sacraments." 
With such a key he maintained that the Eucharist is the fruit of 
the Incarnation, and that this view was in harmony with the letter 
and spirit of the New Testament, the faith of the ancient Church, 
and that of the Reformers. Summing up his arguments, his con- 
tention was that Regeneration is a great spiritual mystery, grow- 
ing out of the Incarnation, consisting essentially in the implanting 
of a seed of life derived from the glorious humanity of Christ and 
involving in itself the germ of the resurrection state, of a redeemed 
bocty and a redeemed soul; that the life of Jesus, thus existing in 
the regenerate, must be sustained and strengthened by a true and 
vital reunion with Him, who is, in his manhood, the fountain of all 
grace and strength in them that believe ; that the sacrament of the 
Eucharist was ordained for this new and regenerate life; and that 
there is, in the right reception of it, a real participation of the body 
and blood of the Lord, or in other words, of this glorified humanit}^. 
Such a view the writer maintains is equi-distant from the Romish 
doctrine of Transubstantiation and the modern theory that repre- 
sents the sacraments as bare and ineffectual signs. The views here 
advanced would, as we think, have met with the endorsement of 
many Dutch Reformed divines at that daj T , if they had had an op- 
portunity to read them in their own paper. They no doubt served 



262 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

as a healthy stimulus to Dr. Nevin in writing his more elaborate 
work on the Mystical Presence. 

The year 1845 had been a }^ear of considerable excitement in 
theological circles, during which, at times, the vessel of the Church 
appeared to be tempest-tossed, and in danger of being submerged or 
broken into fragments ; but it ended well. The Professors felt that 
the}^ had been fully sustained, and the membership believed that 
they had experienced helmsmen to guide the ship. It was at this 
time that Dr. Nevin allowed one of his poetical effusions to be 
published in the Messenger, which he had written when as yet the 
more urgent theological questions of the day had not so fully pre- 
occupied his time .and attention. With a slight addition at the 
conclusion, it was deemed a suitable paper for a Carrier's Address, 
at the opening of the New Year. As it nmy be of interest to our 
readers, we insert it in this place, where it may serve as an intro- 
duction to the theological discussions and conflicts that filled out 
the next year : 

TIME— A FRAGMENT 

How deeply silent is the flight of Time ! 

And 3 r et how awful ! Methinks the rolling sound 

Of all earth's thunders, blending with its course, 

Was not so stirring to the wakeful soul, 

As when, with noiseless sweep, clays, months and years, 

Big with the fate of nations and of worlds, 

Tell us as they clo it rushing way. So still. 

Even as the breath of summer, when it steals 

Soft o'er the brow of night, and not a leaf 

Whispers its presence, save when the aspen 

Trembles — so still and deathlike is the force, 

By which the circling planets, moved of Grod, 

Hold their eternal orbits round the sun. 

These as they traverse with their burning speed 

The deep immense of space, form to the mind 

An image of the dreadful and the grand, 

Embodied in no form of sense besides, 

And by their verj r silence roll contempt 

On whirlwinds, earthquakes, cataracts and storms. 

And they are all an emblem in their flight 

Of the more awful course of Time ; ordained 

To chronicle from age to age its years, 

And showing in the law in which they move 

A shadow of its grandeur and its strength. 

And but a shadow ; for the streaming scope 

Of Saturn, or the Georgian world extreme, 

At thought of which the soul recoils aghast, 

Must shrink to nothing here. The flow of Time 



Chap. XXV] the flight of time 263 

Is the broad universe of space itself 

In motion. Worlds are only wheeling specks 

That play in its ambient sea ; and suns 

That hold revolving systems in their place 

Are with the spheres they rule mere eddies there, 

Each sweeping its own range, but all alike 

Imbosomed in the same deep, broad expanse, 

Whose lucent tide, scarce ruffled by their force, 

Bears them still onward with its rolling age. 

Time! Time! Ah me, the thrilling thoughts that lie 

Bodied in that one word ! The mighty Past ; 

Deep centuries of life for ever gone — 

The strength of nations buried in the dust — 

The world's young image, wasted like a dream — 

The plans of men, whelmed in oblivion's gulf — 

The fate of ages, seated beyond control — 

Thrones crumbled — cities, laws, tongues, empires lost ; 

The drama of their history closed in death, 

And none to tell its record ! Dread abyss ! 

Who but must tremble, when its dark profound, 

Shoreless, and fathomless, and void of form, 

Stands out in vision to his laboring eye ! 

The Future too, more deeply pregnant still 

With all the elements of moral awe ; 

Mysteries untold, and wonderful, and deep 

And reaching their effect to farthest climes, 

And worlds of men unborn ; slumberings of power, 

That yet shall move and heave through all its parts 

Life's ancient structure, and impress new forms, 

As though the very earth and heaven had changed, 

On the whole state of nations ; coming facts 

Not yet omened by signs that teach the wise, 

And such as throw no shadow yet in front, 

Destined hereafter to absorb all thought 

Of human spirits, and become high themes 

For wonder and discourse with angels; all, 

That shall be known or felt or done in life, 

The light and darkness, hopes, fears, sorrows, joys, 

Of countless millions that shall sweep their age, 

In quick succession, pressing to the tomb, 

Like shadows hurried o'er some wide-spread plain, 

When all day long careering clouds are seen 

On Autumn's fitful sky! Prospect immense, 

And full of shuddering grandeur to the mind 

In contemplation stretched with vain attempt 

To grasp its limits! Oh, the depth of Time, 

When Past and Future, folding worlds of power, 

Stupendous, boundless, overwhelming forms,- 

Lie wrapt together as one single thought, 

And make one dreadful word their common home ! 



264 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

The flow of Time! 'Tis striving to the soul, 
To stand in vision on some towering point, 
The index of its way — as where two years. 
The coming and the gone, are seen to touch 
With opposite extremes — and thence to gaze 
Far o'er the prospect, as it pours along 
With deep majestic volume from above 
And fills the tract below! The rolling flood 
Of vast Niagara, where its waters leap, 
With endless torrent, dark, compressed and loud, 
To that dread verge, which marks their dizz}^ fall, 
Holds to the eye, in all its sphere sublime, 
No scene like this. Nor yet the ocean waste, 
Or where its billows sleep or where they rage, 
In broad and awful majesty spread forth, 
Soul-swelling contemplation ! Nor the storm 
That moves in blackness through the troubled sk} T , 
And seems the burden of the wrath of God, 
Instinct with living terror, folding deep, 
Winds, vapors, lightnings, thunders in its womb, 
All are tame spectacles, devoid of force 
And narrow in their forms, when here compared, 
Though else august and dreadful! So far Time 
Outswells in greatness all their flowing strength, 
And drowns their triumph with its vaster thought. 

A Year — a single Year — how much it means ! 

Oh, who shall tell what changes have been wrought 

Within the rolling compass of the last ! 

The world has moved; it stands not where it did, 

Though sun and moon and planets seem the same, 

And the broad universe of life unchanged. 

The volume of its being, vast and full, 

Has travelled onward; nearer to the point, 

Ordained of God, where yet in time to come, 

The history of all its years must end, 

Merged in eternal night. The nations too, 

That animate the world, and with their stir 

Crowd it from age to age, have changed their place, 

And moved with like motion. They are not now 

In state or opening prospect as they were ; 

Thought has gone forward, and beneath its power, 

Silent and deep, the ancient forms of life 

Have all been shaken. Men have lost their awe 

Of shadows once held sacred, and are found 

More free to question all the modes of soul 

In which they lived before. Mind has met mind ; 

And knowledge, kindling from the warm embrace, 

Has multiplied its powers, and far and wide 

With new-born freedom bursting old restraints, 

Pours its felt presence over realms of thought 



Chap. XXY] the flight of time 265 

Once from its dark empire barbarous and strange. 

The spirit of the age, which many days 

Have formed and nourished to its present shape, 

Has still advanced, and elements of strength 

That through centuries have worked apart, 

Displa}^ new order, and with awful haste 

As now beheld rushing in all their parts 

To form one system; whose immense design, 

No longer wrapt in night, shall sweep the globe, 

And channel deep through every age to come 

A pathway for the flowing waves of fate. 

A revolution, not by thundering war, 

But by the force of truth, is on its way — 

More grand, and solemn, and replete with power 

Than all the noise of overflowing death 

Spread over nations by the conqueror's march ; 

This has made progress ; and its stages stamp 

Deep interest on the buried year, not found 

In storied page of battles big with blood, 

Of sieges and assaults, and cities sacked, 

Or lands made waste by fire. The world reveals 

Strange symptoms of a latent power at work, 

And owns its presence now in every clime. 

The social system heaves ; the ground is reached, 

On which its pillars stand, planted of old, 

And they are seen to rock, as though at last 

Their massive forms would tremble from their place. 

Time-consecrated towers, around whose strength 

Whirlwinds and storms have swept and were not felt, 

For ages, tremble now at times and groan 

Through their whole piles, as though an earthquake shook 

Their broad foundations. Nobles start with fear, 

Lest their own palaces should prove their graves ; 

And kings grow pale to find their very thrones 

On which the t y sit, as by some hidden force, 

Tottering and leaning to disastrous fall. 

And it were well, if all this moral show 

Portended only good, the rise of truth, 

The growth of knowledge, and the battle won 

For freedom's holy cause throughout the world. 

But signs of terror, too, and dark dismay, 

That threaten men's best hopes, and point to days 

Black with the curse of God, o'erhang the heavens 

And may be read by all. The times are strange, 

Pregnant with promise, yet infolding wrath; 

The rainbow written on the storm-cloud's sleep, 

That owes its glory to the self-same sky, 

Where lightnings play and thunders have their home. 

The world has reached its Crisis. ****** 

— Csetera desunt. 
11 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE action of the Synod of York, a somewhat trying ordeal to 
Dr. Schaff, proved to be of advantage to him afterward. It 
was a useful introduction to one side of the genius and spirit of 
America, whilst it taught him that there was another side on which 
he could labor. Thus he knew where he stood, and was assured 
that he would be sustained in his mission and work in this new world. 
The future spread out before him in bright colors, and he felt 
strengthened and encouraged to labor with all the industry and per- 
severance of the true German scholar. There may have been some 
tinge of romance about his ardor to supply the Americans generalbv 
with the most valuable results of German theology. At least he 
must have so impressed Dr. Krummacher some 3-ears afterwards 
at Berlin, whilst he dilated on his prospective labors and use- 
fulness in America. The great preacher, whose judgment was 
matured by age and experience, turned to his young friend at the 
dinner table and told him to take care, as "America had a big 
stomach and could swallow him up too." 

After he had thus received a free pass from his brethren to 
scatter the seeds of German science upon American soil, he went 
to work with characteristic industry, wrote out his lectures on 
Church History and Exegesis for the benefit of his small classes 
as thoroughly — as vollstaendlich unci gruendlich — as if he were lec- 
turing to the largest audience of studiosi in the Universities at 
Halle or Berlin. In 1848 he founded Der Deutsche Kirclienfreund: 
Ein Organ fuer die gemeinsamen Interessen der Amerikanisch- 
deutschen Kirchen. It proved to be a very valuable theological 
monthly, and, at the same time, a useful organ for the two German 
Churches. It remained under his editorial care for some seven or 
eight years, when Dr. "W. J. Maun, of Philadelphia, became editor. 
In 1851 Dr. Schaff published his " History of the Apostolic Church," 
which was to be the first volume of his Church Histoiy, and to 
serve as an introduction to the entire work. This with the Kirclien- 
freund was published at Mercersburg — in the German language — 
auf Selbstverlag des Yerfassers — and for this purpose it became 
necessary to import both type and printer. Of this work the 
Princeton Jtevieic said, "it placed its author in the highest rank of 
living or contemporary Church Historians." Dr. Xevin begins his 

(266) 



Chap. XXVI] ebrard on the mystical presence 26? 

notice of it in the Mercersburg Review by saying that "the appear- 
ance of this work deserves to be considered certainly something of 
an event;" and Dr. Krauth, in the Evangelical Review, at Gettys- 
burg, referring to this curt criticism said : " We feel prepared to say 
more, and to designate it as very much of an event, an event which 
will reflect lasting credit on the author and exert a beneficial in- 
fluence on the Church of Jesus Christ." The subsequent career of 
Dr. ScharT as an author is well known, fully justifying the favorable 
opinion which the Princeton Review gave of him at an early day as 
a scholar and Church historian. He was not formed for contro- 
versy, but he had a colleague by his side, who by his knowledge 
of the secret resources of the English language, his wit, and at 
times his withering sarcasm, seldom met a foeman worthy of his 
steel, when attacks, from many directions, were made upon the head- 
quarters of Anglo-German theology at Mercers burg. 

After the denouement of the Synod of York, Dr. Schaff's In- 
augural and the Sermon on Catholic Unity were discussed, as 
already said, more or less, by the religious weeklies, and numerous 
articles appeared in the Messenger, most of which referred to the 
mystical union of Christ with believers as set forth in Dr. Nevin's 
discourse on Catholic Unity. To some of these it became neces- 
sary for him to reply, especially to those proceeding from the pen 
of Dr. Berg, who kept up a chivalrous contest with his opponent 
at Mercersburg, which was much less violent than when he hurled 
his bolts against the Pope at Rome. Impressed with the import- 
ance of the subject in its bearings on the cause of religion and 
sound theology, Dr. Nevin felt that it demanded a more extended 
and a more scientific treatment, and accordingly, in the spring of 
1846, he published The Mystical Presence : a Vindication of the 
Reformed or Galvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Pp. 256. 
Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. The volume was not a very 
large one, but it contained a vast amount of thought and learning, 
more so than many volumes of a much more ambitious size. It 
was a valuable contribution to American theological literature, in 
itself a theological treatise, which summed up and expressed the 
substance of all previous discussions. It was introduced by an 
excellent article from the pen of Dr. Carl Ullman, Professor of 
Theology in the University of Heidelberg, Germairy, at the time, 
on " The Distinctive Character of Christianity," well worthy of be- 
ing carefully studied still by those who take an interest in the 
present state of the Church. It had appeared in the January num- 
ber of the Theologische Studien and Kritiken, a learned German 



i/ 



268 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1841-1853 [DlV. IX 

periodical, for the } T ear 1845. It proceeds throughout on the gen- 
eral theoiy of Christianity as the divine human power in the world, 
as emphasized by the Mercersburg theologians. 

Among the various reviews of the Mystical Presence we here re- 
fer to only two, both emanating from representative scholars of ac- 
knowledged ability, one in German}^ and the other in this countiy. 
The German review is here introduced, although it appeared some 
time after the American. 

Dr. August Ebrard published his recension in the Studien unci 
Kritihen in the year 1850, which was soon afterwards republished 
in the June number of Dr. Schaff's Kirclienfreand in this coun- 
tiy. The judgement of such a theologian as Ebrard, who was him- 
self the author of the most thorough and learned history of the 
Dogma of the Lord's Supper in modern times, was of great value, 
infinitely more so than the cry of heresy shriekers from whole 
brigades of newspaper critics, who did not understand the nature 
of the controversy into which they were ready to plunge, and with- 
out the necessar3 T qualification to devote to it either earnest at- 
tention or the necessary learning. Owing to distance from the 
scene of conflict or want of insight into the state of church rela- 
tions in this countiy, Ebrard strangely regarded the Yindication as 
a defence of the Melanchthonian view of the Lord's Supper, more 
particularly in opposition to the Lutherans of this countiy ; where- 
as it is mainly directed against what is regarded as the prevalent 
rationalism underlying modern Puritan theology, which, whilst it 
adheres to an old traditional orthodoxy and manifests in a high 
degree great moral earnestness and a commendable degree of prac- 
tical activity, is to be honorably distinguished from the dead and 
dry rationalism of Germany. But, like the latter, it divests Chris- 
tian^ , more or less, of its nystical element, makes the abstract 
understanding the chief judge in theology, and to a large degree 
ignores the idea of the Church and the Sacraments. The Lutheran- 
ism of this countiy, under a semi-rationalistic tendency, had fallen 
in some degree from its own original pietistic stand-point into open 
contradiction with its own history, whilst Dr. Xevin, on the other 
hand, in fact, defended the substance, although not the form of 
Luther's doctrine, against many of his nominal adherents. More- 
over, a decided reaction had already taken place among American 
Lutherans, which was owing, partly at least, to Dr. Xevin's writings. 

Ebrard ought, perhaps, to have pointed out more definitely the 
connection of Dr. Nevin*s theoiy of the Lord's Supper with his 
Christology. For, after all, his entire theological system rests 



Chap. XXVI] ebrard on the mystical presence 269 

upon his doctrine of the person of Christ as the absolute union of 
the human and divine, from which proceeds the new moral crea- 
tion, of which the Church is the bearer or receptacle ; and its means 
of grace, the channels ordained by God to bring men into com- 
munication with Himself through Christ. As Ebrard was a repre- 
sentative man in Germany his critique will serve to show how the 
new work was regarded by evangelical theologians in Germany. 
Afterwards we will see how it was received in its own country. 
With these preliminary remarks we therefore furnish the reader 
with the German review of Dr. Nevin's book in a free translation, 
with slight omissions.. 

" The theological literature of North America as a whole," Dr. 
Ebrard remarks, "lies at a remote distance from Germany, but 
the Mystical Presence of Dr. Nevin is a phenomenal exception and 
deserves the attention of its theologians and scholars. In the first 
place, it is the first energetic effort to introduce scientific German 
theology and its results into the English world of America. 
Dr. Nevin, from his youth upwards, imbued with the Puritanic- 
Presbyterian faith of his earty associations on the one hand, and 
on the other, furnished with a thorough knowledge of German the- 
ological literature in its latest results, was just the man to solve 
what was by no means an easy problem. His book was an achieve- 
ment, a feat of personal courage, which has alreadj T drawn upon it 
the most violent opposition. North American Puritanism, with its 
abstract supernaturalism, has largely risen up against him and de- 
nounced him as a Puseyite or Crypto-papist. 

" In the next place he has defended that view of the Unio Mystica, 
which involes a continuous, central life-communion of Christ with 
believers, and of the Holy Supper as an act by which this perpetual 
life-union is strengthened — substantially the Melanchthonian view — 
more particularly against the Lutherans of this country, just as 
the writer had to contend for this same conception in a scientific 
contention with the Lutherans of Germany. Strange to say, how- 
ever, the Lutherans in America did not set up against Dr. Xevin 
the view of Luther himself, but that of Zwingli, and, accordingly, 
did not accuse him of Zwinglianism, but of Crypto-Iiomanism. 
This remark was confirmed by the Lutheran Observer of Baltimore, 
which had called the Nevinian doctrine by the hardest names which 
it could find in its vocabulary : 'the figment of an idea, the low, 
meagre, mystical, confused, carnal, obsolete doctrine, called con- 
corporation. The glorified body of Christ must be received by be- 
lievers with the bread and wine! If this is not a corporeal presence, 



2t0 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

what kind of sense then does such an expression contain? If this is 
not Pusej'ism, if it is not a vast stride towards Romanism, what else 
can it be? This doctrine grates upon the ear, wounds the feelings, 
offends the understanding, and dissolves the unity of the best and 
most spiritual men in the purest Evangelical Churches.' 

"In the third place, Dr. Kevin's work," according to Ebrard, 
" possesses not only an historical, but a practico-dogmatic interest. 
If it had sought to set forth only the old Calvinistic doctrine as 
something already complete, and to defend and press it upon the 
churches in America, it could awaken little interest or attention in 
Germany. But instead of that, and far from it, it seeks, further- 
more, with the aid of categories to reconstruct what was genuine 
gold in the Calvinistic-Melanchthonian view of the Lord's Supper, 
from the depth of a new faith purified b}^ German science, and ap- 
plies a vigorous criticism to what was dross or obscurity of ex- 
pression in Calvin. From this stand-point he falls in fully with the 
stand-point I had adopted in my Dogma vom heiligen Abendmahl." 
It seemed to the German Professor something in the highest degree 
remarkable and to him veiy gratif} T ing, as he says " that an Amer- 
ican Professor, in his entire method of treatment, as well as in his 
apprehension of the TJnio llystica and of the Sacrament, even in 
minute details, starting from the same principle, arrived at the 
same result as I myself did, and this without previous concert or 
design. Dr. Xevin had already, previous to the } T ear 1845, devel- 
oped his theor} r , published and defended it, and the first volume of 
my work on the Lord's Supper had not reached him until the year 
1846, whilst he was engaged in elaborating his ]\Lystical Presence. 
He could still utilize the volume, but only to fortify the positions, 
which he had reached in another and altogether different way. At 
most he could then have appropriated only certain terms or dis- 
tinctions to be used in the way of supplement. So much the more 
pleasant and gratifying to me now is the close inward agreement 
of his judgment of Calvin's doctrine of the Eucharist with my own, 
which he could not as' j^et have known, as the second volume of my 
own work, published in 1846, did not come into his hands until the 
year following. In this coincidence we have a proof that we both 
were here laboring not to promote an incidental subjective view of 
our own, but to make an advance in the development of the same 
theologumenon or theme. And so for a third reason, we bespeak 
the interest of our readers, in behalf of a brief and concise review 
of Dr. Nevin's work." 

Dr. Kevin took his position over against a superficial Puritanism, 



Chap. XXYI] ebrard on the mystical presence 271 

whilst Ebrard, on the other hand, had Lutheranism and its confes- 
sional relations in his eye. The former, starting from a purely his- 
torical representation of a Reformed Church doctrine, undertook 
to show his opponents that their Puritanical view had no claims to 
be called Reformed, and much less Lutheran. Accordingly on this 
ground he goes on to give a positive characterization of Puritanism 
in its inner nature in Chap. 2; brings oat the defects of the old 
Reformed doctrine; presents his own theory as a positive develop- 
ment; and finally justifies it out of the Holy Scriptures. 

"In the first chapter, Dr. Nevin says, 'that Calvin was not the 
author, but simply the finisher of the Reformed doctrine of the 
Lord's Supper,' which agrees with what I have said in the second 
volume of my own work, where proofs in detail will be found that 
Calvin brought to it only an intuition of its relatively perfect form, 
which had been long before anticipated by Haner, Bucer, Brenz and 
many others who had prepared the way for it. As Dr. Neyin cor- 
rectly says, everything in the Reformed doctrine depends on the 
view taken of the Mystical Union in general. Through it Calvino- 
Melanchthonianism is distinguished from Lutheranism, because in 
the former the Holy Supper is regarded as the act by which the 
one, continuous life union with Christ is renewed, whilst in the 
latter, it is a new kind of corporeal union with the body and blood 
of Christ, in addition to the Unio Mystica as a pure intellectual 
union. This union is more than a moral union — a unio moralis — 
more than a legal union — a unio legalis ; it is very truly a union 
with the living Saviour Himself, with the fulness of His glorified 
person, which is present with us through the Almighty power of 
the Holy Spirit; and in fine, it is not a union merely with the spirit 
or divine nature of Christ, but a union with Christ incarnate in our 
flesh and therefore with His humanity, so that we have part in the 
merits and benefits of Christ because we have part in His substance. 

" On the other side, the communion in the Reformed doctrine is 
with man, not with a thing, not with bread or wine, and so consub- 
stantiation as well as transubstantiation is set aside. The body 
and blood of Christ are not connected with the bread and wine, but 
with the transaction and the act by which the invisible communica- 
tion to us of the glorified humanity of Christ is connected with the 
act of the external imparting and receiving of the bread and wine. 

"This connection, however, is objective, says Dr. Nevin. Faith 
does not give the Sacrament its power; it is the condition of its ac- 
tivity for the recipient, not the active principle;" to which Dr. 
Ebrard adds: "Cultivated or ploughed ground is the condition 



272. AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

under which the seed is received, but not that which causes the 
seed to come forth." Calvin long before had said: u Nos asserimus 
omnibus afferi in Sacramento Christi corpus et sanguinem, ut soli 
fideles inestimabili hoc thesauro/nm/^wr." 

" That such is the Reformed doctrine Dr. Nevin shows by numer- 
ous and appropriate passages quoted from Calvin and the Reformed 
Confessions. Farel says that the ' res Sacramenti is bound to the 
signum, whether the latter is offered to believers or unbelievers ; ' 
and Ursinus holds the same view of the Lord's Supper. 

" In the second chapter Dr. Nevin gives a full and fair statement 
of the modern Puritan doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The popu- 
lar theory, as maintained by numerous leading Puritan divines 
who are quoted, recognizes no kind of union with Christ in the 
Eucharist except a spiritualistic one, which is the product of a new 
exercise of subjective faith and subjective devotion, called forth by 
the celebration of the Supper. The image of Christ in the mind, 
by an effort on the part of the communicant, is in this way revived 
and renewed. The character of the ordinance as a mystery is thus 
lost sight of altogether with the objective power of the Sacrament ; 
faith, instead of being a condition, becomes the active cause; the 
plowing of the soil is no longer to be taken as the precedent condi- 
tion for the reception of the celestial germ, as it is in no need of 
the germinal seed. The ploughing itself will suffice for all that. 
And so it comes to no union with the person but with the spirit of 
Christ only, not with Christ incarnate, but with the divine nature 
of Christ. 

"Dr. Nevin then affirms that this theory subjects itself to an un- 
favorable judgment, because the consensus of the entire primitive 
Church is opposed to it ; but he also points out that under this as- 
pect Puritanism must have a natural affinity for rationalism ; ex- 
ternally, as the history of the school of Storr and Reinhard proves ; 
and internally, because it is a thorough subjectivism, involving a 
disregard for history, for the objective, for the Church, and for all 
outward forms. Its goal is a spiritualism, which too often takes 
its beginning in the spirit but ends in the flesh. 

" In the third chapter Dr. Nevin seeks to present a scientific state- 
ment of the biblical doctrine of the Lord's Supper. He begins the 
work of formulating it with a critique of the Calvinistic doctrine 
on the subject. Although on the whole correct, Calvin's view 
nevertheless seem to him, in the way it is presented, to involve de- 
fects which in turn endanger its very substance. In the first place, 
he does not make a sufficiently clear distinction between the idea 



Chap. XXVI] ebrard on the mystical presence 213 

of organic law, which constitutes the proper identity of a human 
body, and the material volume it is found to embrace as exhibited 
to the senses. A true and perfect body must indeed appear in the 
form of organized matter. As mere law it can have no proper 
reality. But still the matter, apart from the law, is in no sense the 
body. Only as it is found to be transfused with the active presence 
of the law at every point, and in this way filled with the form of 
life, can it be saifl. to have any such character; and then it is, of 
course, as the medium simply by which what is inward and invisible 
is enabled to gain for itself a true outward existence. The princi- 
ple of the body as a system of life, the original salient point of its 
being as a whole, is in no respect material. A real communication 
between the body of Christ and the bodies of saints, therefore, does 
not imply necessarily the gross imagination of any transition of 
His flesh as such into their persons. In such sense as this, we may 
say, without twisting our Saviour's words, 'the flesh profiteth noth- 
ing, 7 and here precisely comes into view one of the most valid and 
forcible objections to the dogma of the Roman Church, as well as to 
the kindred doctrine of Luther, in both of which so much is made 
to hang on a sort of tactual participation of the matter of Christ's 
body in the Sacrament, rather than in the law simply of his true 
human life. This is urged by Calvin himself with great force against 
the false theories in question. This shows, of course, that he was 
not insensible to the idea of the distinction now mentioned ; a point 
abundantly manifest besides from his whole wa}^ of representing 
the subject in general. Still it seems to have been a matter of cor- 
rect feeling with him, rather than of clear scientific apprehension. 

"Thus he makes too much account perhaps of the flesh of Christ 
under a local form (here confined to the right hand of God in 
heaven), as the seat and fountain of the new life which is to be con- 
veyed to His people ; and the attempt which is then made to bring 
the two parties together, notwithstanding such vast separation in 
space, must be allowed to be somewhat awkward and violent. In 
this case he may be said to cut the knot, which his speculation fails 
to solve. Christ's body is altogether in heaven only. How then 
is its vivific virtue to be carried into the believer? By the miracu- 
lous energy of the Holy Spirit; which, however, cannot be said in 
the case so much to bring down His life into us, as it serves rather 
to raise us in the exercise of faith to the presence of the Saviour 
on high. The result, however, is a real participation always in His 
full and entire humanity. But the representation is confused and 
brings to the mind no proper satisfaction. 



2t4 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

" Dr. Xevin goes on to srj, that the real communion of the body 
of Christ does not involve a communication of the matter of His 
flesh and blood, but an inwrought operation of the law of the life 
of Christ into the sphere of our individual life. The life-centre of 
Christ must take hold of our life-centres as peripheral points and 
become central in us, and thus reproduce in us psychic-somatic 
individual life. Calvin felt this more than he was fully conscious 
of, and therefore he exerted himself so much to bring us into con- 
nection with the really separated bod}^ of Christ, and postulated a 
mystical operation of the Holy Ghost, whilst He still wrought only 
through the subjective faith of the believers. Here, however, Dr. 
Xevin falls into contradiction with himself. Elsewhere he acknowl- 
edges — recognizes the activity of the Holy Spirit in working re- 
pentance and faith in us, metanoetic and mystica-anagenetic, just 
as far as he admits that the Unio Mystica also takes place under 
the operation by the Hol} T Spirit, and thus he goes too far when 
he blames Calvin because he speaks of the Holy Spirit as a medi- 
ator between Christ and believers. But it is certain that the idea 
of the organic reproduction of the law of the life of Christ in be- 
lievers, already dimly foreshadowed in Gregory of Xj^ssa, but un- 
folded in such pre-eminent style by Dr. Xevin, did not come forth 
to a clear consciousness in Calvin; and it is true that he, instead of 
speaking of a virtus vivifica carnis Christi, should have fallen back 
rather on the idea of the organic embodiment of Christ's human life. 

" Then, in the second place, Calvin does not emphasize suffi- 
ciently the unit}^ of what we denominate person, both in the case 
of Christ Himself and in the case of His people. He dwells too 
much on the life-giving power of the Jlesh of Christ (as if this 
were not closely bound to His soul) ; on an outflowing of this 
power, instead of a reproduction of the psychic-somatic as well as 
of the pneumatic individual life of Christ in the individual life of 
believers ; and on the side of man, he again makes the soul alone 
the bearer of Christ, whilst Christ Himself passes over into the 
persons of believers. Christ's person is one, and the person of the 
believer is one : and to secure a real communication of the whole 
human life of the first over into the personality of the second, it is 
only necessary that the communication should spring from the 
centre of Christ's life, and pass over into the centre of ours. This 
can be effected only by the Holy Ghost, but not in such a sense as 
if He stood between us and Christ, and we were not immediate^ one 
with Christ, but just the reverse, so that the Holy Ghost plants in 
us that law of life of Christ itself. 



Chap. XXVI] ebrard on the mystical presence 215 

"A third defect in the form in which Calvin exhibits his theory is 
found in this, that he does not make a clear distinction between the 
individual (mikrokosmic) and the generic (makrokosmic) life of 
Christ. A single oak tree involves a thousand acorns and conse- 
quently a thousand trees ; an entire forest of oak is simply the 
evolution of a single tree. The second Adam, no less than the 
first, thus continues His life in those begotten of Him — true, pro- 
vided we make proper account of the idea of begetting, and do not 
understand it as merely figurative." 

After these remarks, Dr. Ebrard gives a number of Dr. Xevin's 
theses or propositions respecting the Mystical Union and the 
Lord's Supper somewhat abbreviated, and in his own language. 
But we here present them all in order as given by the author him- 
self in what he styles his " Scientific Statement :" 

The human world in its present natural state, as descended from 
Adam, is sundered from its proper life in God by sin, and utterly 
disabled in this character for rising by itself to any higher position. 

The union in which we stand with our first parent, as thus fallen, 
extends to his entire person, body as well at soul. 

By the hypostatical union of the two natures in^ the person of 
Jesus Christ, our humanity as fallen in Adam was called again to 
a new and imperishable life. 

The value of Christ's sufferings and death, as well as of His entire 
life, in relation to men, springs wholly from the view of the Incar- 
nation now presented. 

The Christian Salvation then, as thus comprehended in Christ, 
is a new life in the deepest sense of the word. 

The new Life, of which Christ is the Source and organic Principle, 
is in all respects a true human life. 

Christ's life, as now described, rests not in his separate person, 
but passes over to His people ; thus constituting the Church, which 
is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. 

As joined to Christ, then, we are one with Him in His life, and 
not simply in the wajr of a less intimate and real union. 

Our union to Christ is not simply parallel with our relation to 
Adam, but goes beyond it, as being immeasurably more intimate 
and deep. 

The mystical union includes necessarily a participation in the 
entire humanity of Christ. 

As the mystical union embraces the whole Christ, so we too are 
embraced b}^ it, not in a partial, but whole way. 

The mystery now affirmed is accomplished, not in the way of two 



216 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

different forms of action, but by one and the same single and undi- 
vided process. 

In all this, of course, then there is no room for the supposition of 
any material tactual approach of Christ's body to the person of 
His people. 

Such a relation of Christ to the Church involves no ubiquity or 
idealistic dissipation of His Body, and requirers no fusion of His 
proper personality with the persons of His people. 

The Mystical Union, holding in this form, is more intimate and 
real than anj T union which is known in the world besides. 

The union of Christ with believers is wrought by the power of 
the Holy Ghost. 

Christ's life is apprehended on the part of His people only by 

faith. 

» 

The new life of the believer includes degrees, and will be com- 
plete only in the resurrection. 

A Sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ Himself; 
wherein, hy sensible signs, Christ and His benefits are represented, 
sealed and applied to believers. 

The Lord's Supper is a Sacrament, wherein, b} T giving and re- 
ceiving bread and wine according to Christ's appointment, His 
death is showed fix .^, and the worthy receivers are, not after a 
corporeal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of Mis 
body and blood, with all His benefits, to their spiritual nourishment 
and growth in grace. 

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper has reference directly and 
primarily to the atonement wrought out hy Christ's death on the 
Cross. 

As the medium, however, by which we are thus made partakers 
of the new covenant in Christ's death, the Holy Supper involves a 
real communication with the person of the Saviour, now gloriously 
exalted in heaven. 

The real communication, which believers have with Christ in the 
Holy Supper, extends to His ivhole person. 

Christ communicates Himself to us, in the real way now men- 
tioned, under the form of the sacramental mystery as such. 

The Lord's Supper is the medium of a real communication with 
Christ, onlr in the case of believers. — These statements Dr. Nevin 
used as starting points for further discussions and explanations in 
the third chapter of his book. 

In connection with these propositions Ebrard makes some brief 
characteristic comments. " According to Dr. Nevin," he sa} T s, " the 



Chap. XX YI] ebrard on the mystical presence 211 

human race is not an aggregation, not a ' heap of living sand-grains,' 
but the evolution of one distinct single life. The corruption of 
human nature through the fall is therefore organic. — Our union 
with Adam is bodily as well as spiritual, although not a material 
particle of Adam's body is in any of us. It is sufficient that the 
law of Adam's life is in us, and reproduced in each one of us. — 
Through the Incarnation of Christ our human nature is raised into 
a divine life. — The Incarnation in humanity brought with it the 
necessity of suffering in Him who was sinless. The imputation 
of such suffering is not external, mechanical, nor simply judicial, 
because in Christ the new deutero-Adamic humanity was realty 
present in His sufferings when He made satisfaction for sin. — Re- 
demption is not a new doctrinal system, not merely a new object 
of thought, but a new life. Christianity is not a reformed Judaism, 
but a new creation. The new life, however, has entered into the 
old life. — This new life is a true human life ; not the life of the 
eternal, transmundane, world-ruling Logos, but the life of the 
Word made Flesh. — Christ's life does not remain in His own sepa- 
rate person, but reproduces itself creatively in those who by a sub- 
jective faith are born of or out of Him. In such He plants His 
own life, and at the same time He plants Himself in His makrokos- 
mic body. In the first place we are taken hold of b}^ Him at one 
point not of our thinking but of our being, and therefore at the 
central point, and warmed into a new life ; and from that the holy 
fire of the new life spreads, sanctifies our thoughts, as well as our 
nature gradually, and destroys, in like degree, the old man. "Here," 
says Dr. Ebrard, " Dr. Nevin accepts of the comparison of magne- 
tized iron, already used by myself, and in an ingenious way brings 
this into connection with the passage in John, 12:32. 

"As we are one with Christ, the transformation at our vital cen- 
tre is, therefore, creative and substantial. The Unio Mystica is 
obviously at hand. Christ is really one with us, so soon as the 
centre is born again, and, therefore, the righteousness of Christ 
forthwith belongs to us, independently of the degree of sanctifica- 
tion which has already commenced. — This union with the second 
Adam is much higher and more inward than the one with the first 
Adam. Christ does not stand in a remote and indirect connection 
with the single individual, but directly with each one, and is not 
only the begetter, but the permanent head and ruler. — The Unio 
Mystica is a unio with the humanity of Christ. We cannot stand 
in a substantial connection with the eternal Logos as such, for 
then we must be God. A Unio Mj^stica with the Logos as such 



2*78 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

would be a Unio Hypostatica, a Homousia, such as that which 
unites the Father to the Son. Humanity is the exclusive and the 
only possible form by which we become partakers of the Logos. — 
The mystical union is a union of the entire Christ with the entire 
person of the believer. This union, however, cannot become dual- 
istic, because life is one and not dualistically divided. Body and 
soul have one life. The soul without the body is dead; and there- 
fore the Scripture never speaks of the immortality of the soul but 
of the resurrection. — There can, therefore, be no mere bodily union 
with Christ, as a peculiar kind of union with Him, for such a union 
would not be rustical but magical. See Dogma des Heiligen 
Abendmahls, I. p. 92. Accordingly there can be no material com- 
munication to us of the matter of Christ's body. Neither an 
ubiquity of the individual glorified body of Christ, nor a mixture 
of it with our bodies is demanded. — Our union with Christ is not 
merely that of descent, as from Adam, but one that continually and 
immediately roots itself in Him. Consequently Christ is present 
in His Church, notwithstanding the organism of His individual life. 
— This union is brought about by the Holy Ghost, but not in such 
a way that He in us is to be regarded as the ' substitute ' for the 
presence of Christ Himself, but that Christ through the Holy Ghost 
plants within us His own peculiar life. The Unio Mystiea is spir- 
itualis, not in opposition to corporalis — geistlich, nicht geistig. 
Compare Dogma des heiligen Abendmahls, Yol. I. p. 89. — Faith is 
not the principle of the new life, but simply the organ by which it 
is received. It is not the act of ploughing which produces the seed ; 
the seed alone can become the living fruit of the living ear of corn, 
" In the fourth or last chapter of his book, Dr. Nevin seeks to 
sustain his theses or propositions from the Hoty Scriptures. Al- 
though we cheerfully admit that, whilst he does not by any means 
confine himself to dicta probanda in the old scholastic style, he 
develops an entire Biblical theolog}^ in a spirited and general way, 
it still appears to us an objection that he brings forward his ' Biblical 
Argument ' in a special chapter, instead of developing his own prop- 
ositions from the Scripture, and letting them appear as the result of 
his investigations of the Scripture. Would not this have made a 
more convincing impression upon the minds of his Puritanical op- 
ponents? We think that chapters three and four might with ad- 
vantage be allowed to exchange places. — The fourth chapter gives 
not onl}^ the Biblical argument for the Lord's Supper, but in fact 
the development of the whole dogmatic system upon which Dr. 
Nevin 's doctrine of the Lord's Supper rests and from which it pro- 



Chap. XX YI] ebrard on the mystical presence 279 

ceecls ab ovo. The first portions of the fourth chapter moreover 
include the most luminous parts of the whole book. 

"With a depth of thought, which elsewhere we are not exactly 
accustomed to find in the English language, with a spirit such as 
we meet with to some extent in Lange's writings, and in addition 
with a precision and perspicuity of thought, for which Dr. Nevin 
had to form in the English tongue a language for himself, he de- 
veloped the following ideas ; that man is the crown and fulfilment 
of nature ; that heathenism is a yearning of humanity to become 
one with God ; that Judaism is a revelation of God to man, but 
not in man ; and that Christianity is a new creation. Aristotle, in 
his day, founded an intellectual kingdom, which carried in its ma- 
ternal bosom all subsequent intellectual developments since his 
time, and has not yet passed away ; but this kind of spiritual ac- 
tivity was the product of a development that had preceded it ; 
Christ, on the other hand, was not the product of any previous 
development, however organically He may have inserted Himself 
and His life into it. — We should pass beyond the limits of a notice 
of Dr. Nevin 's book, if we should attempt to give in detail the rich 
contents of this last chapter ; and we must content ourselves with 
giving only the captions of the single sections : The Incarnation, 
— the New Creation, — the Second Adam, — Christianity a Life, — 
the Mystical Union, — the 6th chapter of John, — and the Lord's 
Supper. From this last chapter, however, as well as from the en- 
tire book, it is in the highest degree evident, that Dr. Nevin has 
acquired for himself the priceless credit of having transplanted 
the ripe fruits of the German theological spirit into the American, 
that is, the essentially English-supernaturalistic and Puritan world 
of thought. It may be that North America in general is destined 
to become the heir for the purpose of carrying forward the devel- 
opments of German science, threatened at home on all sides by 
very stormy weather." — This was the judgment of one of the most 
learned and most distinguished scholars of Germany concerning 
Dr. Nevin's volume on the Mystical Presence. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

SUCH was the reception the Mystical Presence received in Ger- 
many, the land — par excellence — of theological science. We 
now proceed to consider how it was regarded in its own country. 
The ablest and by far the most respectable review of its contents 
came from Princeton, from the pen of Dr. Charles Hodge in the 
Princeton Repertory or Review for the year 1848. He was one of 
the best, if not the best representative of Puritan theology on this 
side of the ocean, a learned theologian, a clear and perspicuous 
writer, a forcible logician T and with considerable experience as a 
controversialist. He and Dr. Nevin were said by high authority in 
Germany, in connection with Edwards and Channing, to be the 
greatest theologians that North America had produced. It may be 
said, therefore, that the contest was between two theological giants. 
We here give briefly the successive attacks and counter-attacks as 
the respective champions appeared in the field. 

The Princeton Professor had the advantage of position, certainly. 
He stood before the public as the central theological leader in some 
degree of the entire Old School Presbyterian Church in this country, 
and his article was characterized throughout by a corresponding 
consciousness of authority and power. The weight of his name and 
pen was with multitudes sufficient to outweigh any amount of 
favorable judgment on the other side. Such a man as Krummacher, 
in this case, or of any other Evangelical German divine, could 
hardly be seen or felt, where all could be easily settled by the voice 
of the Princeton Repertory. Such a voice deserved to be heard, and 
the Mercersburg Professor was bound to make due account of it. 

But whether the Princeton representative had made the neces- 
sary preparation for the conflict is another question. In the open- 
ing sentence of his review, he says that he had had Dr. Kevin's 
Mystical Presence on his table for two years, after its publication, 
but had really not. been able to read it until within a fortnight, and 
then " only under the stimulus of a special necessity to carry him 
through such a book." As a master in Israel he had been called on to 
investigate the question, What is the real doctrine of the Reformed 
Church on the Lord's Supper? Naturally he turned to Dr. Kevin's 
book, and gratefully acknowledged the assistance derived from it. 
It was understood at the time that there was a pressure brought 

(280) 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 281 

to bear on the Editor of the Repertory by respectable Presbyterian 
clergymen to answer the book and prevent it from extending its in- 
fluence. At the close of his first paragraph he had alread} r arrived 
at the conclusion, " that Dr. Nevin was tenfold further from the doc- 
trine of the common forefathers than those whom he commiserated 
and condemned." — It would have perhaps been better if he had put 
this conclusion at the end of his article, as mathematicians are ac- 
customed to place the initials of a famous Latin sentence after 
they have proved their propositions. Dr. Nevin, on the other hand, 
had studied the subject in dispute for many years and was prepared 
— semper paratus — not only to reply to attacks from week to week 
at home in the weekly paper, but to give due attention to an elabo- 
rate article in a quarterly from a distance. 

Dr. Hodge in his introduction had remarked that Dr. Kevin's 
tone had been so disparaging, if not contemptuous, when speaking 
of all branches of the Reformed Church, except his own, that he 
must have had reason to be surprised that all this had been endured 
in silence. To this he replied, that he had not spoken disrespect- 
fully of the Puritan churches as such, but simply in regard to their 
theories, and reminded his accuser that the Repertory had been 
quite as free and sweeping in its judgements on all German the- 
ology. Others had made similar complaints against him, but it is 
a remarkable fact that he, throughout, combats what he considered 
false principles, not individuals, much less sister branches of the 
Church. 

Dr. Hodge from the start simplified the question in dispute very 
much by pointing out the basic or fundamental point in the Mys- 
tical Presence from which he dissented in toto coelo. With the 
Lutheran Church and the Church of England the book taught 
that the believer was united to the human as well as the divine na- 
ture in the Lord's Supper. He affirmed that the union held only as 
it regards the divine nature, and that this was the true doctrine of 
the Reformed Church. It thus became an historical question, and 
he adopted the course pursued by Dr. Nevin in consulting original 
historical documents to sustain his position. He acknowledges 
the great difficulty in such an investigation, because the Reformed' 
confessions were confusing, as it seemed to him, in their statements,, 
some of them leaning to the one side, some to the other, and 
some of them contradicting both sides. He, however, arranged 
them into three classes: first, those that taught the Zwinglian view, 
such as the first Basel and the First Helvetic confessions, in con- 
nection with the. writings of Zwingli himself; then, those that ad- 
18 



282 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

hered to the view of Calvin,' such as the Gallic, the Belgic and 
the Anglican confessions, including the Thirty-Nine articles of the 
Church of England ; and thirdly, those symbols in which the 
Zwinglian and Calvinistic agree, among which he places the Hei- 
delberg Catechism and the Consensus Tigurinus, a somewhat fam- 
ous document drawn up by Calvin in Zurich in 1549, to promote 
peace and concord among the Swiss churches. The reviewer, in this 
arrangement, very adroitly makes free use of the authorities given 
by Dr. Nevin after much labor in his book, and seeks to turn them 
as his own batteries against the position of his opponent. 

He admits that the view of the Lord's Supper, as given in the Mys- 
tical Presence was substantially the view of Calvin, Bucer and oth- 
ers, in regard to the humanity of Christ, or His flesh and blood, but 
denies that it became the settled doctrine of the Reformed Churches. 
That came out afterwards in the Consensus Tigurinus, with which 
he himself fully agreed, and to which, as he supposed, the Evan- 
gelical Churches generally would not object. The true Calvinistic 
view had come into the Reformed Churches as a foreign element 
through Calvin, Bucer and others in their efforts to stand on better 
terms with the Lutherans, was not indigenous, and, in the course 
of time, was eliminated as not in harmony with their life. Here 
again the critic ingeniously turns the principle of development, a 
strong weapon of the Mercersburg professors, against one of their 
strongholds. There was a progress, it was alleged, in the settle- 
ment of the doctrine of the Eucharist, a health} 7- one also, but as 
a result of this growth Calvin's eucharistical theory was thrown 
off as no longer pertaining to a healthy state of affairs. 

But to all this Dr. Nevin vehemently demurred, and he was pre- 
pared to meet the attack from this quarter with new and old re- 
sources. His zeal was enkindled, and he wrote with more than 
usual vigor against what he firmly believed as gross violence to 
history no less than truth itself. " The authorities here presented," 
he says, " it will be seen, are to a great extent the same, as far as 
they go, that are to be found quoted in the Mystical Presence. Dr. 
Hodge has not gone into any original historical investigation of the 
subject, but has thought it sufficient to trust his general preconcep- 
tions of the case, simply applying them to the material here fur- 
nished to his hand, in such a way as to suit the object he had in view. 
The only new authority which may be regarded as of any account 
is the Consensus Tigurinus, which as it happens to sound most 
favorably to his cause, he insists on making the rule, or rather the 
Procrustean bed, by which to screw into proper shape the sense of 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 283 

all testimonies and sj^mbols besides. This, however, is a most 
arbitrary requirement, to which no mind, at all at home in the the- 
ological literature of the sixteenth century, can be willing for a 
moment to submit. The Consensus Tigurinus has never been 
allowed to be at all of any such primary force in the Reformed 
Church. Dr. Hodge talks of compromise and ambiguous phrase- 
ology, as entering into the sacramental statement of the age in 
other cases; but if there be room anywhere for such supposition, it 
is to be found emphatically in the case of this Consensus of Zurich. 

" It is acknowledged on all hands, that Calvin condescended as 
far as he possibly could towards the Zwinglian extreme for the 
purpose of assisting the Swiss Church to come up, as it were, to 
the higher ground on which he habit aally stood. It has indeed been 
generally conceded, that in some of his expressions he fell into 
actual contradiction with his own system, as previously taught, and 
as he held it afterwards to the end of his life. At all events, it is 
a most violent assumption on the part of Dr. Hodge, that his plain, 
unequivocal declarations on the subject of his own faith, a hundred 
times repeated throughout his works, are to be overruled by the 
authority of this one document of most questionable sense, in- 
stead of allowing it to be intepreted rather by the hundred authori- 
ties that are explicit and clear. 

"But all this is spoken b}^ concession. Even the 'forlorn hope' 
of the Consensus Tigurinus will be found to fail the cause it is 
brought up to support, when subjected to true historical trial. 
Dr. Hodge approaches it in the spirit of his own time and position : 
as though it had been lately framed in Philadelphia or Boston ; 
ignoring and forgetting, out and out, the sacramental views of the 
sixteenth century : and finds it tolerably easy, in this way, to put 
into it what he conceives to be a sound and satisfactoiy sense.— 
The articles could be easily signed by our modern churches gener- 
ally, just as they can readily subscribe to the old Apostles' Creed, 
taking all in their, own sense. 

"But could they do so'in the proper historical sense of the arti- 
cles themselves. That is the only question of much account in the 
case. Happily, as regards the Consensus Tigurinus, we are not 
thrown simply on the general teaching of Calvin to make out the 
sense in which it is to be taken. We have a full exposition of it 
from his own hand, of which Dr. Hodge here takes no notice. 
Could he subscribe to the sacramental doctrine of that? I shall 
show hereafter that he could not, unless prepared at the same time 
to adopt the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession. — Dr. Hodge 



284 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

is pleased to say also, in view of the extracts taken from our ex- 
cellent Heidelberg Catechism, that there is nothing in its account 
of the Lord's Supper to which exception would even now be taken. 
He means, however, of course again, provided all be construed in 
his own sense. In the sense of Ursinus, neither Dr. Hodge nor Dr. 
Kurtz could endorse the Heidelberg Catechism; just as little as 
either of them could sign in good faith the Augsburg Confession 
in Melanchthon's sense. 

" But now it is not true that in the Mystical Presence the author- 
ities are adduced without any attempt at least to set them in their 
proper historical relations. A careful distinction is made through- 
out the book between the confessions preceding and those follow- 
ing Calvin, as full notice is taken also of their respective relations 
both to Lutheranism on the one side and Zwinglianism on the other. 
In my surve}-, however, the Zwinglianizing element is made to give 
waj^ gradually altogether to the Calvinistic, which appears at last 
according^ as the acknowledged ruling life of all the leading Re- 
formed confessions. This order of things is exhibited, not in the 
waj T of wilful assumption, but on clear historical deduction (or 
as we might sa}^ of a true historical development. Eel.) It suits 
not, however, of course, the theory of Dr. Hodge; and so without 
troubling himself at all to interrogate the actual course of history 
on the subject, he simply orders his classification in such a wa}- as 
to make his Zwinglian authorities at once co-ordinate in full with 
the Calvinistic, as though both ran parallel in time throughout, and 
at last settled into a sort of joint result, substantially agreeing with 
the Zwinglian doctrine, as this stood in the beginning! Never was 
there a more unhistorical mode of proceeding in the case. — It is 
pretty evident besides that in his whole estimate of the subject, Dr. 
Hodge has been ruled hy the authority of Guericke (an ultra Lu- 
theran — Ed.), as he is led to speak of the several Reformed confes- 
sions in his Symbolik." 

After remarks and replies of this character, Dr. Xevin makes a 
long historical Excursus, in which, with much learning, he gives a 
more extended history of the old sacramentarian controversy than 
in his Mistical Presence, in support of his position as over against 
the Princeton Repertory. The proofs adduced are ample, based 
on quotations from the writings of Calvin and the best authorities 
of the Reformation period. The imputation that Calvin was in 
&\\x sense a time-server, that he adapted his view to suit the Lu- 
therans at one time and the Zwinglians at another, is effectually 
set aside hy his own solemn asseveration that he had not changed 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 285 

it at all in any material sense. It was set forth in his Institutes, 
published in 1536, before he came into communication with the 
Lutherans at Strasburg in 1538, and suffered no change except in 
the way of enlargement and further exposition. In his own judg- 
ment the agreement at Zurich, in the Consensus Tigurinus, was, by 
no means, a retreat from the high sacramental views which he held 
during his whole lifetime, as appears from his Exposition attached 
to the Consensus in his works, Tome IX, Pp. 653-659. The most 
that can be said of this document is that it was Calvinistic-Zwing- 
lian, over against the current Megandrian Zwinglianism, a rational- 
istic tendency, which did great injustice to the Swiss Reformer. 

Here Calvin explicitly says, among other defensive remarks, that 
" our readers will find in this Consensus all that is contained in the so 
called Augsburg Confession, as published at Regensburg, provided 
it be not strained, through fear of the cross, to please the papists." 
— In connection with such statement the best European authority 
is quoted in favor of the main contention in the excursus. 

"This view," says Professor Ebrard, "was not brought in, as 
modern polemics may represent, in the way of contemporary com- 
pliance towards the Lutherans, as though the Reformed Church 
had to thank the Lutheran for such a morsel of truth as she thus 
came to possess; but we find it, long before Bucer's negotiations, 
independently uttered by (Ecolampadius in the Confessio Mylhu- 
siana, and Calvin independently also brought it in from France." — 
And in regard to the Heidelberg Catechism, Ebrard also says: 
" We need not offer a panegyric on its merits ; it speaks its own 
praise. Its wonderful union of doctrinal precision and inward 
earnestness, easy comprehensibility and pregnant depth, leave it 
without a parallel in its wa}^. It is at once a system of divinity 
and a book of practical divinity ; every child can understand it on 
the first reading, while yet the catechist has in it the richest mate- 
rial for profound elucidation." 

" Calvin rendered an incalculable service to the Church," says his 
biographer Henry, " in directing the attention of one wide section 
of it to the force and power of the Lord's Supper, which some in 
Switzerland were disposed to turn into a mere commemoration. 
Millions of Christians in the Reformed Church owe it to him that 
they have enjoyed the Supper in its right sense, so as to partake in 
it of the true, spiritual, glorified Christ. His deep view, moreover, 
has almost everywhere become prevalent now in the Evangelical 
Church." This last remark is made of Germany, of course, and not 
of our Evangelical Churches. Dr. Xevin adds, that "it is some- 



286 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

what queer, that the same number of the Princeton Repertory , 
which sinks the Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist so low in its 
review of the Mystical Presence, has an article highly commend- 
atory of Calvin's Life b} r Henry. In this same article, the sacra- 
mental controversy of the sixteenth century is called a foul excres- 
cence simpty on the Reformation ; and Luther is said to have dis- 
graced himself by Ms unexampled 'revilings of Zwingli and Calvin. 1 
Luther came to no collision personalty with Calvin. The Repertory 
quietty assumed, moreover, that the old Calvinistic faith here was 
just its own, which, however, as we see from Henry himself, was 
not the case." 

From what has been said it appears that Princeton and Mer- 
cersburg ' agreed that in the course of time a change took place 
in the Reformed Church in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, as 
Dr. Nevin had affirmed in his book. The former affirmed that 
Calvin's view was ruled. out as a foreign element in its growth; the 
latter denied this in toto, and maintained that it became predomi- 
nant in the Reformation period as "the survival of the fittest." 
Dr. Hodge acordingly proceeds to show what he conceives to be 
its legitimate and normal form, or in other words, he gives a con- 
fession of his own. We here give it in his own words, followed 
always b}- Dr. Nevin's construction of the words in italics, showing 
in what sense he could agree with Dr. Hodge. Both could sub- 
scribe to the words of Dr. Hodge, but as regards the emendations of 
his language the} r were very far apart. 

Christ is realty present to His people in the Lord's Supper, but 
b} T His Spirit, — as the medium of a higher mode of existence. 

Xot in the sense of local nearness, but of efficacious operation, — 
nullifying mirifically the bar of distance, and bringing the very 
substance of His body in union with their life. 

They receive Him, not with the mouth, but by faith, — as the 
organ by lohich only the soul is qualified to admit the divine action 
indicated. 

They receive His flesh, not as flesh, not as material particles, nor 
its human life, — but dynamically in the inivard power of its life, so 
that the clause u nor its human life," is incorrect. 

They receive His bod} T as broken, and His blood as shed, — the 
value of that sacrifice carried in the vivific virtue of the same body, 
now gloriously exalted in heaven. 

The union thus signified and effected between Him and them, is 
not a corporeal union, nor a mixture of substances, — in the Roman 
or Lutheran sense, — but spiritual and mystical; — not merely mental. 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 287 

but including the real presence of Christ's whole life under an 
objective character , and reaching on one side also through the soul 
into the body ; arising from the indwelling of the Spirit, — not as the 
proxy only of an absent Christ, but as the supernatural bond of a 
true life connection, by which His very flesh is joined to ours, more 
intimately far than the trunk to the branches, or the head to its 
members in the natural world. 

The efficacy of this Sacrament as a means of grace is not in the 
signs, separately taken, nor in the service, — outwardly considered, 
— nor in the minister, nor in the word, but solely in the attending 
influence of the Holy Ghost, — as the necessary complement or in- 
ward side of the divine mystery itself, of whose presence the out- 
ward signs are the sure guaranty and pledge, and whose mirific 
action can never fail to take effect objectively where the subject is in a 
state to admit it by faith. This we believe — filled out with positive 
contents — to be a fair statement of the doctrine of the Reformed 
Church. 

The two learned doctors differed considerably in their idea or defi- 
nition of a Sacrament, and this helped to keep them farther away 
from common ground, as will appear from Dr. Nevin's anti-criticism. 

" In denying that the elements possess any saving efficac}^ in 
their own separate nature, Calvin and the Reformed symbols did 
not mean to deny such efficacy to the sacraments in their full sense; 
for this we have had full opportunity to see, was supposed *to in- 
clude this very conception as a necessary part of their constitution. 
Occasionally indeed the mere outward side of the service is denom- 
inated the Sacrament, which then of course is represented as hav- 
ing in itself no power for sacramental ends ; it is only the accom- 
panying grace of Christ's Spirit which can make it of any account. 

" But in any full view of the case, these two things are regarded 
as going together in the constitution of the sacrament itself. Here 
it is that Dr. Hodge is wholly at fault. His idea plainly is that 
the relation of inward and outward is to be counted just as loose 
and free in the sacraments, as in the case of any other occasion 
that may be turned into means of grace by the concurring influ- 
ence of God's Spirit; and this view he also endeavors to impose on 
the old Reformed Church. But who that has listened to Calvin or 
Ursinus, or attended in any measure to the clear sense of the old 
symbols, can fail to see how greatly they are wronged by every 
imagination of this sort. A sacrament, they tell us perpetually, 
consists of two sides, one outward, and the other invisible and in- 
ward, which must always be taken together to complete the pres- 



288 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

ence of the mystery. The hoty Eucharist consists thus of a ter- 
rene part of objects and acts that fall within the sphere of sense, and 
a celestial part, other objects and parts, parallel with the first, 
which have place only in the sphere of the spirit. The outward 
things are in this view signs only and pictures of realities, belong- 
ing to a higher order of existence ; the inward things are those in- 
visible realities themselves. 

" The outward and the inward were both considered as constit- 
uent sides, and one not a whit more so than the other, of the same 
sacramental transaction. The bond, therefore, uniting them, ac- 
cording to the old doctrine, is not physical or mechanical in any 
wa} T , implies no local contact or inclusion, as the Romanists and 
Lutherans might seem to teach ; and falls not at all within the 
reach of experience under any other form. To express this pecu- 
liar character, it is denominated a sacramental union ; by which, 
however, is not meant that it is simply nominal and natural, but 
only that it is extraordinary and peculiar to this case. It is re- 
garded as in fact most intimate and necessary. Though not jo'ned 
together in the same way, the inward and outward meet here simulta- 
neously in one fact, as realty and truly as soul and bod} T are united 
in the constitution of our common life. The sacrament is not the 
elements used in its celebration, nor the outward service only in 
which this consists, but a divine transaction, comprehending in it- 
self, along with such visible and earthly forms, the invisible power 
of the very verities themselves that are thus symbolically repre- 
sented ; all of which was expressed in the following statement, ex- 
tracted from a confession presented at the Colloquy of Worms in 
1557, \>y Beza and other ministers in the name of the Gallic 
churches. 

" We confess that in the Supper of the Lord not only the benefits 
of Christ, but the very substance of the Son of Man, that is, the same 
true flesh which the Word assumed into perpetual union, in which 
He was born and suffered, rose again and ascended to heaven, and 
that true blood, which he shed for us, are not only signified, or set 
forth symbolically, typically in figure, like the memory of some- 
thing absent, but are truly and realty represented, exhibited, and 
offered to us ; in connection with S3 T mbols that are by no means 
naked, but which, so far as God who promises and offers is con- 
cerned, always have the same thing itself truly and certainty joined 
with them, whether proposed to believers or unbelievers." 

After Dr. Hodge had succeeded, as he supposed, in proving from 
historical documents that the doctrine of the Lord's Supper as 



Chap. XXYII] reply to dr. hodge. 289 

taught in the Mistical Presence was not the doctrine of the Re- 
formed Church, he proceeded to attack the theology of the book 
with much apparent vigor, the attacks from different quarters fol- 
lowing each other in quick succession, as if the object were to make 
short work of the whole affair and finish it at once. The heresies to 
which Dr. Nevin's language and doctrine lead as "their legitimate 
consequences," something which the Germans would call a remark- 
able concatenation of consequenzmacherei, are numerous and conflict- 
ing. We here give them by name : Eutychianism, Socinianism, Pan- 
theism, Schleiermacherianism, Sabellianism, Romanism, Lutheran- 
ism, Mysticism, Rationalism and especially Germanism. On the ec- 
clesiastical chart he says that " his doctrine seems to be somewhere 
between the Romish and Lutheran view." Dr. Hodge never con- 
descended to the use of low or vulgar language in his attacks. His 
weapons are all polished, and his arrows, sharpened with sarcasm or 
perhaps wit, glitter as they fly. Of course he reserves some of the 
latter for the final attack on what he regarded a castle, but which 
Dr. Nevin and others on the west side of the Delaware, regarded as 
a windmill or a man of straw. We here give one of these as a speci- 
men. " Burke once said, he never knew what the London beggars 
did with their cast-off clothes, until he went to Ireland. We hope 
we Americans are not to be arrayed in the cast-off clothes of the Ger- 
man mystics, and then marshalled in bands as the ' Church of the 
Future.' " These were the last words that Princeton had to say of 
the greatest alumnus and theologian that went forth from its classic 
halls or had sat under Dr. Hodge's instructions. The great cham- 
pion then in dignified style made his bow and left the field, never 
to enter it again, in the following beautiful language: 

"We said at the commencement of this article, that we had never 
read Dr. Nevin's book on the Mystical Presence, until now. We 
have from time to time read others of his publications, and looked 
here and there into the work before us; and have been thus led to 
fear that he was allowing the German modes of thinking to get the 
mastery over him, but we had no idea that he had so far given him- 
self up to their influence. If he has any faith in friendship and 
long continued regard, he must believe that we could not find our- 
selves separated from him by such serious differences without deep 
regret, and will, therefore, give us credit for sincerity of conviction 
and purpose." 

Dr. Nevin, in his anti-critique, with his usual vigor and fluency 
of language, considered these supposed legitimate consequences 
with fairness and respect, although being of such a contradictory 



290 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

character they might seem to most persons to confute themselves. 
On the one hand he defines the Eut} T chian heresy, and shows how he 
had avoided that dangerous strand; but then on the other hand, he 
alleges that Dr. Hodge, by separating the humanity of Christ from 
His divinity in the Lord's Supper, laid himself open to the charge 
of a Nestorian tendency, at least, as a legitimate consequence. 

" Not to admit of such organic unity in Christ's life," says Dr. 
Kevin, in respectful language due to his great teacher, — "is the 
error of Nestorius. I should be sorry to have it thought, that I 
should charge Dr. Hodge with this in the way of offset simply to 
his charge of Eiuvychianism preferred against the Mystical Pres- 
ence ; although the facility with which he brings this charge, does 
constitute undoubtedly, in the circumstances, a presumption of 
some undue leaning to the other side on his own part. I should 
be sorry, moreover, to make the mere name of an ancient heresy, in 
this case, the vehicle of any particular odium. A large part of 
our modern Protestantism probably, respectable and orthodox in 
other respects, stands precisely on the same ground, without having 
at all reflected on the fact. It is with the thing, of course, rather 
than the name, that we are here principally concerned. In such 
view, I feel authorized to pronounce the Christology of this article 
in the Biblical Repertory decidedly Nestorian. 11 

This Princeton Review, at an early day, considered itself as set to 
oppose the introduction of German theolog}^ and philosoplry into 
this country. Its articles on German Transcendentalism were re- 
garded by mairy as as a complete estoppel to its progress in our 
literary circles. In regard to German theolog} 7 , a distinguished 
professor in his day said that if he could have his choice, he would 
have preferred that it should be sunk in the Atlantic rather than 
that it should cross it. Dr. Hodge, therefore, had a large public to 
sympathize with him in his reference to the "cast-off-clothes," and 
he gained a point apparently on Dr. Nevin on his side of the house 
when he alleged that "Dr. Nevin 's theory was in all its essential 
features Schleiermacher's theory." This assertion could be made 
to mean much or little, but fifty years ago it meant a great deal in 
our hemisphere, and that of a very serious character. To this Dr. 
Nevin made only a calm and dignified reply. 

" I have," he says, " read Schleiermacher some ; hope to read still 
more; acknowledge the mighty force of his learning and genius; 
and trust that I shall not cease to cherish his memoiy with affec- 
tionate respect. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that I have 
copied him directly in my theory of Christianity and the Church. 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 291 

So far as his influence has entered into m} T thinking, it has been 
mainly in an indirect way, through the medium of the German the- 
olog} r under its best form. My obligation to this theology, I have 
no wish to conceal or deny. But to be in living connection with it 
at all, at the present time, is to feel necessarily to some extent the 
force of Schleiermacher's mind. Not as though all came from him, 
for that is by no means the case. The German Evangelical the- 
ology includes various conflicting tendencies, and appears in broad 
opposition to the views of Schleiermacher. — He formed indeed, as 
is well known, no-school, and left behind no fixed school of phil- 
osophy. His power was shown rather in the wa}^ of exciting and 
stimulating others, by throwing out ideas of a comprehensive and 
productive character. In this way, though dead, he continues to 
speak in the theolog}^ of Germany, and will do so hereafter also, 
no doubt, for a long time to come. Such men as Neander, Tholuck, 
Julius Mueller, Nitzsch, Tivesten, Ullmann, Dorner, Bothe, and 
others all own his influence and speak reverently of his character. 
If I am, therefore, to be reckoned among his disciples, it can be at 
best only in the general way in which these, and many others of 
like character, with all acknowledged theological independence, 
may be distinguished with the same title. I do not know that this 
should be considered any very serious reproach. 

" Schleiermacher, however, we are told, held very serious errors. 
This I have no wish to deny. It is admitted generally by those 
who have most respect for his memorj'. But what then ? Are his 
errors such as to exclude from his writing all wisdom and truth ? 
Or, is it only of the infallible and immaculate we may expect to 
learn anything in the sphere of religion? Alas, then, at whose feet 
should we ever find it safe to sit, though it should be only in the 
most transient way ? — I have no wish or concern to make myself 
the apologist of Schleiermacher, just as little as I would think of 
making myself the apologist of Origen — whose great merits and 
great faults, theological^ , exhibit a somewhat parallel case for our 
contemplation. 

" It needs no great discernment to see that my general theolog- 
ical tendency is quite different from that involved in what Dr. 
Hodge denominates Schleiermacher's 'system.' No man was less 
bound than he by the authority of the outward and objective ; he 
is, in one sense, the very apostle of individualism ; among all Prot- 
estants it would be hard to find one whose Protestantism may be 
taken as more absolute and free than his. The great object of the 
Mystical Presence, on the other hand, is to assert the claims of an 



292 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

objective, historical, sacramental, churchly religion, over against 
the subjectivity of mere private judgment and private will. One 
great ground of complaint against it, with Dr. Hodge himself, is 
found notoriously just in this, that it is regarded as too little Prot- 
estant and too much catholic. But nobod} T even thought of bring- 
ing such a charge against the system of Schleiermacher. — Schleier- 
macher, a ritualist, disposed to make undue account of forms, as to 
give the letter at any point a place higher than the spirit ! Xever, 
surely, was there a judgment more fulhv aside from its proper mark. 
Alas, it is the great fault of his theology that it is so entirety in- 
ward, and makes so little account of histoiy and the outward 
Church. In this respect, the Mystical Presence is quite in another 
order of thought. 

"Altogether, indeed, my sense of the Church, which has come to 
be active and deep, has not been borrowed in an}^ direct and im- 
mediate way from German theology. I know of no writer there, 
whose views in full I would be willing to accept on this subject. 
So far as churchly influence has been exerted upon me from this 
quarter, it has been mainly through the force of theological ideas, 
that have served to bring my mind into right position, for perceiv- 
ing and appreciating what is due to this whole side of Christianity 
in its own nature. The later German theology has done much un- 
doubtedly to provide right views of histoiy, deeper appreciation 
of the Christological questions, more realistic conceptions altogether 
of the new creation introduced into the world by Jesus Christ. Its 
tendency, therefore, is to break up the force of our common modern 
spiritualistic abstractions, and thus to restore at the same time old 
catholic ideas to their proper force. In this way it is well adapted 
to make the necessity of an objective, sacramental religion felt, even 
beyond the measure of its own positive teaching. Onty in this way 
can it be said to have aiy thing to do with my particular church 
tendenc}^. 

" The trite and easy sarcasm about ' cast-off clothes,' as here ap- 
plied, is unworthy of Dr. Hodge. It would not cost much trouble, 
of course, to retort in some equally insulting style. But would it 
serve at all the cause of charity and truth? 

''He regrets my German S3 T mpathies. Am I not, however, in a 
German Church, and in conscience bound to be true to its proper 
historical life? Could I deserve to be regarded anything better 
than a traitor to my trust, if I made it to overflow and overwhelm 
this life with foreign modes of thought, derived purely from Scot- 
land or New England? I would say solemnly: No man has a 



Chap. XXYII] reply to dr. hodge 293 

right to take advantage of his position in a German Church for any 
such purpose as this. It is well, indeed, that it should be Ameri- 
canized ; all nationalities require that ; and the process must always 
involve their approximation to a common standard. But Ameri- 
canization in religion is not at once subjection to the one single 
t}rpe of thinking that prevails in New England or the Presbj^terian 
Church. It should be the result of our different nationalities, work- 
ing into each other in a free way. 

"What we need is a more thoroughly scientific apprehension, 
not only of the letter and shell of Christian^ simply, but of its 
true divine contents ; and this, I feel very sure, can never be 
reached by any process, in which the results of the later German 
theology are ignored or trampled uninquiringly under foot. It is 
not necessarj^, of 'course, that we should follow them in any blind 
slavish way ; but we must at least treat them with such respect as 
is clue, all the world over, to the earnest wrestling of earnest minds 
with the most solemn problems of our general human life. What 
philosopher can now deserve to be heard who is altogether igno- 
rant of Kant and Hegel ? What system of Ethics may be counted 
truly scientific, which owes nothing to the labors of Schleiermacher, 
Daub or Richard Rothe ? Still more ; can any treatise on sin be 
now complete, which leaves out of view entirely through ignorance 
or scorn the profound investigations of Julius Mueller? Can 
any Christology be worth reading, that makes no account of the 
immortal work of Dorner? To ask such questions is enough. 
Surely it is not so perfectly self-evident, as Dr. Hodge appears to 
suppose, that German modes of thinking must needs be false and 
bad, the moment they are found to fall away from the reigning tra- 
ditions of America." 

Dr. Nevin, in criticising Calvin's view of the Lord's Supper, had 
said that it labored under a defective psychology, which he en- 
deavored to correct with the help of what he regarded as a better 
theory of man's nature. " Dr. Nevin," says Dr. Hodge, " attributes to 
Calvin a wrong psychology in reference to Christ's person. What 
is that but to attribute to him wrong views of that person? And 
what is that but saying his own views differ from those of Calvin 
on the person of Christ? No one, however, has pretended that 
Calvin had any peculiar views on that subject. In differing from 
Calvin on this point, therefore, he differs from the whole Church." 
To this Dr. Nevin replies by asking a question. " Seriously," he 
says, "can Dr. Hodge suppose that every variation in the science 
of Psychology involves necessarily a change or corresponding 



294 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1S44-1853 [DlV. IX 

alteration in the substance of the Christian faith? Is his own 
psychology at all like that of Tertnllian, or of the ancient Church 
fathers generally? Snch changes necessarily affect always. more or 
less, the form of doctrines for the understanding; but the truth 
itself may be the same under different forms; whence precisely the 
idea of dogmatic history. In the Mystical Presence, Calvin's theoiy 
is said to labor under this view only, as exhibited through the 
medium of a defective psychology ; and the better form of our 
present science is employed accordingly, not to subvert its material 
substance, but only to place it in a light more suitable to the wants 
of the understanding at this time. Dr. Hodge employs a psychol- 
ogy too in the case; not Calvin's by any means ; but his object 
with it is to kill the very substance of the old doctrine, which it 
has been all along my endeavor to preserve alive. v — Drs. Xevin and 
Hodge not only had different psychologies, but widely different 
philosophies that controlled, more or less, their thinking. Accord- 
ingly they could not always see theological doctrines in the same 
light, and much less so, in their views of the Lord's Supper; for 
just here there is a profound biblical psychology underhung this in- 
stitution, which Dr. Xevin sought to bring out and emphasize, with- 
out, however, satisfying the psychology of his critic. — Dr. Hodge 
was a Lockian, an extreme nominalist, and regarded all general 
terms as abstractions of the mind without reality or entity in the 
natural order of the world. See Dr. Hodge's Systematic Theology, 
Vol. II. on the subject of Anthropology, the first five chapters. 

Dr. Xevin on the other hand was Platonic, and a moderate realist. 
As a general thing he regarded the mass of our conceptions and ideas 
as mere abstractions formed by the human mind, or as he was 
accustomed to call them, "abstract generalities;" but there were 
some generalities, such as the State, the Church, the race, humanity, 
the law of life, life Itself, corporeity and others which had to him a 
concrete existence. This kind of realism pervades all of his writing, 
and with other profound thinkers he thought it helped very mate- 
rially to a right understanding of the Scripture, much better than 
the old nominalism. Of course he did not for a moment imagine 
that the Word of God must in this way bow to a school of phil- 
osopLy for its proper interpretation. He firmly believed that he 
found this realism in the Bible itself, which throughout is its best 
interpreter. 

Such in brief outline was the nature of the controversy con- 
ducted by two of the ablest theological professors in America near 
one-half of a century ao-o. It is believed that it has not been with- 



Chap. XXVIIJ reply to dr. hodge 295 

out good results. It led others to think, and to studj T the wealth 
of the old confessions, and if with some it dropped out of memory, 
with others it was of service in begetting more elevated views of 
the most solemn and central institution in the Christian Church. 
Strange to say, such higher views made their appearance a few years 
ago in the Presbyterian Review,the successor of the Biblical Reper- 
tory. They appeared in the April number of the year 1887, in an arti- 
cle on the Lord's Supper, written by the Rev. Henry J. Van Dyke, 
D. D., a prominent divine in the Presbyterian Church. Substan- 
tially they agree with the Mystical Presence on the points in which 
the Repertory took Dr. Nevin to task. The writer refers to Dr. 
Charles Hodge as holding that there "were three distinct types 
among the Reformed — the Zwinglian, the Calvinistic, and an inter- 
mediate form, which latter ultimately became symbolical, being 
adopted in the authoritative standards of the Church," in which now 
he "ventures to observe that Dr. Hodge differs from most orthodox 
writers on the subject." Throughout the article Dr. Van Dyke main- 
tains that Calvin's doctrine became the doctrine of the Reformed 
Churches generally, as strongly stated in the Westminster Con- 
fessions as in any other Reformed formularies. He also without 
any hesitation asserts that the union of believers with Christ and 
their communion with Him in the Lord's Supper includes his hu- 
manity as a matter of course no less than with his divinity. 

"The communion," he says, "is the actual participation of the 
body and blood of Christ, that is, of His divine human nature. — 
The Romish Church is consistent with Scripture (quoad hoc. Ed.) 
and with the teaching of all the Reformed Confessions, when she 
insists that Christ's presence in the Sacrament includes His human 
as well as His divine nature, His body and blood, as well as His 
deity. — The Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, as taught in 
the Thirty-Nine Articles and in the Westminster Confession, is inti- 
mately connected with the two great mysteries of the incarnation, 
and the personal union of believers with Christ. The holy com- 
munion has its profound roots in the one mystery and its precious 
fruit in the other. — The Sacrament is founded upon and leads to 
His one invisible person, which is the reservoir and the channel of 
all divine fulness for our salvation. He is not and cannot be di- 
vided. His human nature never had, and never can have, any exist- 
ence separate from His Deity. — The efficacious manifestation of 
the Godhead in and through -the humanity of Christ is as permanent 
as the incarnation. The Son of God was, from the beginning, the 
living Word of the Father, the fountain and origin of life ; and 



296 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

now, since the Word became flesh, it is the Son of Man who has 
power on earth to forgive sins, and is exalted a prince and a Saviour 
to give repentance and remission. — When He says, 'I will come to 
you,' He certainly does not mean the same thing as when he says, 
'I will send the Comforter.' Wherever He is, there is His thean- 
thropic person. His human nature is virtually omnipresent, be- 
cause it is forever united to the divine." This article of Dr. Yan 
Dyke evinces learning and ability, and from his numerous refer- 
ences to the best authorities, shows that he had thoroughly studied 
the subject upon which he wrote. It is, however, remarkable, that 
he nowhere mentions the Mystical Presence or the controversy to 
which it gave rise. Perhaps both had been forgotten as if buried 
in the past. If so, his testimon} T in favor of sound sacramental 
doctrine in the Presb} T terian Church, in which he says "there is a 
wide-spread defection from the doctrine of our standards in regard 
to the Lord's Supper," is only so much the stronger. 

Dr. Nevin withdrew from the field of combat, if not with as much 
apparent grace as his friend Dr. Hodge, } 7 et with digntty, and with 
a clear consciousness that he had maintained the ground which he 
had taken. 

"My work is now done," he says. "In obedience to the Prince- 
ton challenge, I have called myself once more solemnly to account, 
and endeavored in the fear of God to sustain my own position as 
taken in the Mystical Presence. The whole sacramental question 
has been re-examined. The objections and strictures have been 
carefully tried in the light of history, as well as by the standard of 
Scripture. For the whole process, special assistance has been at 
hand besides in the masterly work of Ebrard. 

"As for what is peculiar in the theory of the M} r stical Presence, 
the scientific form in which it has been attempted to save the sub- 
stance of the old doctrine, it is enough to say that it has passed 
unscathed through the ordeal at least of this review. The objec- 
tions made to it spring either from gross misapprehension of its 
actual sense, or from the false relation of the reviewer himself to 
the old church doctrine. They are conditioned throughout by the 
Nestorian divorce of Christ's sacrifice from his life, which character- 
izes so unhappily the whole theology of Dr. Hodge. Still, if the 
theory in question were shown to be unsatisfactory in a scientific 
view, the case would require that it should be given up as a theory, 
and some better one if possible substituted in its place. Let it ap- 
pear, that it is really at war with a single article of the old Apostles' 
Creed, and I stand read}' to cast the first stone in the work of 



Chap. XXVII] reply to dr. hodge 29? 

crushing it to death. I lay my hand upon my heart, and before 
heaven and earth pronounce every article of that creed as my own, 
and only wish, indeed, that I had the opportunity of doing it with 
a loud voice, in the worshipping congregation of God's people every- 
Lord's day. 

" There may be some, I trust not many, however, in the German 
Reformed Church, who could find all theological discussion of this 
sort comparatively unprofitable, affecting to be so set on practical 
interests, as to have no taste for speculation or controversy in any 
shape. It is good certainly to make the life of religion the main 
thing, and to avoid vain disputations in regard to its nature. But 
who will pretend to say seriously, that the general question here in 
view is of this character? Who may not see, that it goes at once 
to the very heart of Christianity, and links itself with the most 
momentous practical concerns on every side? Not to take an in- 
terest in it must argue, in a minister especially, such a spiritual 
levity, as can hardly be reconciled with the idea of a heart-felt in- 
telligent zeal for godliness. What think ye of Christ? is the 
searching interrogation, which lies at the bottom of this whole 
inquiry concerning the character of the new creation, comprehended 
in the Church. Is the redemption of the Gospel, including all the 
benefits of Christ's life and death, a concrete reality, that holds in 
the force of his living constitution as a perennial, indissoluble fact,, 
the new tvorld which grace has made, and in this alone ; or is it an 
abstraction, which may be applied to men and appropriated by 
faith, in no connection with the Life by which it originally was 
brought to pass? Our inward answer to all this must be ever con- 
ditioned necessarily by our view of the Church; and finds its exact 
measure alwa}^s in our theory of the Holy Sacraments. Eviscerate 
these of their old Catholic sense, and it is in vain to pretend to an}^ 
true faith in the article of a Holy Catholic Church, as it stood in 
the beginning; and without this faith again, the Christological 
mystery is necessarily shorn of its proper significance and glory." 

Dr. Hodge reviewed the Mystical Presence in the April number 
of the Repertory, 1848, and Dr. Nevin's articles in reply, twelve in 
number, appeared weekly soon afterwards, in the Messenger, from 
the 24th of May to the 9th of August following. They were of 
unusual length, and no room could have been found for them in any 
of the quarterlies of the day, as they would have fully filled out an 
entire number. Published thus in a denominational paper, as might 
be supposed, comparatively few of the readers of the Repertory or 
of the public generally had an opportunit}" to see them. At home,. 
19 



298 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

however, they were read with avidity by laymen as well as min- 
isters, where they made a deep impression. 

The two great professors now rest from their labors here on earth, 
after they had both gone beyond their fourscore }^ears. What they 
saw on earth through a glass darkly is now revealed to them clearly 
in the light of eternity, and together they enjoy the fall fruition of 
that wonderful union between Christ and his people, which here in 
time is so much of a mystery. Dr. Nevin had reason to complain 
of the manner in which his work was attacked by his old friend 
at Princeton, but he never allowed any unkind feeling to arise in 
his mind towards him. The respect and esteem between the two 
continued to the end. Some years before his death Dr. Hodge 
made it convenient to visit Lancaster, and he was heartily received 
as a guest in Dr. Kevin's family. The meeting and intercourse 
were cordial in character, and tended very much to cement the 
friendship formed in their earlier years. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

TP to the year 1848 Dr. Nevin was necessitated to address the 
^ public almost exclusively through the columns of the Weekly 
Messenger, which, as the organ of a single religions denomination, 
had only a limited circulation. As this subjected him to some incon- 
venience, and as moreover it was felt that there was need of a gen- 
eral medium in which his more elaborate articles might appear in a 
permanent form, the Alumni Association of Marshall College, at its 
annual meeting in 1848, appointed a committee to establish such an 
organ under the editorship of Dr. Nevin. It had indeed been 
spoken of at other meetings, but at this one, Henry A. Mish, Esq., 
lawyer and editor at Mercersburg, offered to publish a review, pro- 
vided he received the necessary support from the Alumni and 
others, and a committee was appointed to take the matter in hand. 
The proposition excited a generous enthusiasm, and by the end of 
the 3 r ear it was believed that it would be safe to embark in such an 
enterprise. Dr. Nevin, for reasons satisfactory to himself, declined 
to become the responsible editor, but cheerfully consented to be 
the leading contributor, which was about the same thing, and in 
the end something better. The new periodical was called the 
Mercersburg Review, no difficulty being experienced in finding for 
it an appropriate name. The first number appeared on the 1st of 
January, 1849, and from that time onward once every two months;; 
the strong desire to see and read it, preventing it from becoming a 
quarterly at once. It paid the printer, but no one else, because no 
one concerned in it wished to be paid. It was, however, enthusias- 
tically received and read within the circle of its friends, the Alumni, 
the clergy of the Church and others. It was edited with ability, 
and arrested attention not only in this country, but occasionally in 
England and Scotland. For vigor and freshness of thought it 
compared favorably with the best publications of the kind in the 
country. The article in the first number by Dr. Nevin on " The 
Year 1848 " was vigorous, hopeful, and somewhat optimistic ; and as 
it was in some degree a mirror of his mind, it showed better than 
anything else where he stood at this period, distressed with anxiety 
about the state of the Church, yet hopeful that God in His all-wise 
Providence would bring order out of confusion, a new cosmos out 
of the old chaos. 

(299) 



300 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

As he soon afterwards freed himself from the responsibility of 
the theological chair, where he had to confine himself, more or less, 
to denominational theology, he felt himself, in a larger degree, free 
to discuss the more general and vital questions of the times. These 
all were, in one way or another, christological and closely con- 
nected with the Church Question. The latter now, more than ever 
before, began to engage his waking and perhaps his sleeping hours. 
Never before, perhaps, did philosopher, scientist or theologian be- 
stow more study or prayerful attention than he to &ny deep prob- 
lem that called for solution. Many in England, like Newman and 
Manning, or like Haecker and Brownson, in this county, settled it 
for themselves by falling over into the Catholic Church ; whilst 
nearly everybody else here and abroad, following in the lead of 
Brownlee, Breckenridge, Berg, and others, thought it could be 
settled only by destroying the Church of Rome in its roots and 
branches. Dr. Nevin, on the other hand, thought that the question 
was one that ought to be studied and solved in some more rational 
way, by allowing neither extreme to settle it for others. He never 
imagined that he was prepared to solve it fully himself, but he was 
quite willing to make such contributions towards its solution as 
lay within the compass of his power. The Mercersburg Review of- 
fered him such an opportunity, and the Reformed Church afforded 
him the necessary freedom of action for discussing the great ques- 
tion. 

It was not long, however, before his trenchant articles excited 
alarm, and in the year 1851 those on "Early Christianity " induced 
a somewhat nervous editor of the Weekly Messenger to pronounce a 
caveat or a subdued alarm. But the "leading contributor" to the 
Review continued to contribute article after article with a remark- 
able fluency of pen until the } r ear 1852, whether they pleased every- 
body or not. Having finished his fourth article on Cyprian, he 
thought he had performed his share of the work and supposing, not 
perhaps without some feeling of discouragement, that the Review 
had fulfilled its mission, he recommended that it should be discon- 
tinued. There were some who were anxious that this should be 
done to prevent strife, and a learned Doctor of Divinit}^ earnestly 
urged the writer, the chairman of the Publishing Committee, to 
stop the Review at once, and to burn all the printed sheets in the 
hands of the printer for the last number of the year. But at the C om- 
mencement in the latter part of September, the continuance of the 
Review for another 3-ear was referred to the Alumni at their annual 
meeting. The atmosphere was murk3 r , and it appeared as if it might 



Chap. XXVIII] the mercersburg review 301 

be taken for granted that the Committee would be exonerated from 
further service in conducting the periodical; but when it was ascer- 
tained that it paid expenses, one Alumnus after another arose up in 
the meeting and favored its continued publication, urging that it 
was needed as a bond of union between the members, and that it 
might be made useful to themselves and others, independently of 
the immediate object which had called it forth as an organ for Dr. 
Nevin. Eloquent speeches were made in its support, and the feel- 
ing became very strong that the discontinuance of the Review at the 
time would be a calamity, which ought by all means to be averted. 
The enthusiastic feeling awakened at this meeting seemed to have 
an electric influence, and had the effect of rendering this commence- 
ment one of a most pleasant character. It opened with the gloom 
of a rainy morning, but, after this meeting of the Alumni, it ended 
with a clear sky and a bright sunset. It was not the first instance in 
which the young and vigorous have given inspiration to their elders 
under the heat and burden of the day. It showed, at least, which 
way the wind was blowing. Dr. Schaff was quite surprised, could 
not talk enough about it, and thought there must be something in it. 
Dr. Nevin, on the other hand, smiled and said that it might be well 
after all to try the experiment of continuing the Review; it was 
understood that he would always be a welcome contributor to its 
columns, and that from time to time the Review might still become 
a necessity when he wished to communicate his thoughts to the 
public. 

From the year 1849-1853 the Review continued to be published 
by the Publishing Committee as a bi-monthly. After that it ap- 
peared quarterly under the title of the Mercersburg Quarterly Re- 
view, up to the year 1857, when Dr. E. V. Gerhart and Dr. Philip 
Schaff were appointed editors. They remained in this position 
until the year 1861, when, on account of the distracted state of the 
country, it was thought best to discontinue the further publication 
of the Review for the time being. During this period of its his- 
tory it had retained its original motto, a quotation from Anselm : 
Neque enim qasero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. 
In the year 1867 it was revived and published by S. R. Fisher & 
Co., under its first title, the Mercersburg Review: an organ for 
Christological, Historical and Positive Theology ; edited by Rev. 
Henry Harbaugh, D. D. Its motto was exchanged for another, 
which was taken this time from Irenseus : Unus Christus Jesus, 
Dominus noster, veniens per universam dispositionem, et omnia in 
semet ipsum recapitulans. Rev. Dr. Thomas G. Appel has been its 



302 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

editor from 1868 to the present time, having Rev. Dr. E. E. Higbee 
associated with him as co-editor for several j^ears, and for the last 
five or six 3 T ears past the Rev. J. M. Titzel, D. D. Its motto at 
present is more practical, but just as profound as those which went 
before : The Truth shall make you free. 

This Review all along has maintained a high character for variety 
of learning, ability and vigor, among other periodicals of a similar 
character. Under all the circumstances of the case, its history is 
in fact something phenomenal, as evincing the rapid spread of the- 
ological culture in a German Church, in which forty or fifty years 
ago there were very few of its ministers or laymen, who could write 
out a thesis in theology in the English language with comfort to 
themselves or others. After Dr. Nevin withdrew from the Review 
he continued to contribute to its columns articles of great value 
from time to time until the year 1883, when failing e}^e-sight com- 
pelled him to hy aside his prolific pen. We here give a list of all 
the articles that he wrote for the Review during each year for a 
space of thirty-five years. Most of his contributions were of more 
than ordinary length; the}" were about 100 in number and filled 
over 2,800 pages of the Review. — It is needless to say that every 
article sought earnest^ to establish some important truth or to 
promote some practical end. 

i<^— Preliminary Statement.— The Year 1848.— True and False 
Protestantism, a review of Dr. Schaff's Principle of Protestantism. 
— The Apostles' Creed, concluded in three articles. — Sartorius on 
the Work and Person of Christ. — False Protestantism. — Kirwan's 
Letters to Bishop Hughes. — Zwingli no Radical. — Notices of Prof. 
Adler's Dictionary of the German and English languages, and of 
three Discourses on God in Christ, delivered at New Haven, Cam- 
bridge and Andover. — The Classis of Mercersburg and the Endow- 
ment of the Seminary. — Morell's Philosophy of Religion. — The 
Lutheran Confession. — The Sect System, in two articles. — Histori- 
cal Development. — Puritanism and the Creed.— The Liturgical 
Movement. — In all nineteen articles, occupying 306 pages out of 
the 612 in the volume. 

1850.— The New Creation. — Brownson Quarterly Review, two 
articles. — Faith, Reverence and Freedom. — Wilberforce on the In- 
carnation. — Noel on Baptism. — Bible Christianity. — Doctrine of 
the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper. — The Moral Order of 
Sex.— The New Testament, by R, C. Trench, M. A.— Trench's Lec- 
tures. Eleven articles. Pp. 269. 

1851. — Catholicism. — Liebner's Christolog}". — Neander's Practi- 



Chap. XXYIII] the mercersburg review 303 

cal Exegesis — Modern Civilization, by Rev- J. Balmes. — Cur Deus 
Homo. — Elements of Christian Science, by William Adams, S. T. 
D. — Schaff' s History of the Apostolic Church. — The Apostle Peter, 
translated from Schaff 's History of the Apostolic Church. — The 
Anglican Crisis. — The Holy Eucharist. — Early Christianity, two 
articles. — Zacharius Ursinus. Thirteen articles. Pp. 334. 

1852. — Early Christianity, the third article. — Fairbanks Typol- 
ogy. — The Heidelberg Catechism. — A Word of Explanation to the 
Church Review. — Cyprian in four articles. — Dr. Berg's Last Words. 
— Book Notices. — Anti-Creed Heresy. — Closing Notice. Twelve 
articles. Pp. 306. 

1853. — Address at the Formal Opening of Franklin and Marshall 
College, June 7, 1853. — Man's True Destiny; Address to the First 
Graduating Class of Franklin and Marshall College, Aug. 31, 1853. 
Two articles. Pp. 334. 

1851f. — Dutch Crusade. — Wilberforce on the Eucharist. Two 
articles. Pp. 11. 

1855. — Introductory Address at the Inauguration of Be v. Dr. B. 
C. Wolff, as Professor of Theology, delivered at Chambersburg, Pa. 
Pp. 26. 

1856. — The Church Year. — Christian Hymnology. Two articles. 
Pp. 12. 

1857. — Two articles on Dr. Hodge's Commentary on the Ephe- 
sians. Pp. 92. 

1858. — Thoughts on the Church, in two articles. Pp. 59. 

1859. — The Natural and Supernatural. — The Wonderful Nature 
of Man. — Eulogy on Dr. Ranch, repeated. . Three articles. Pp. 83. 

I860.— The Old Doctrine of Christian Baptism. Pp. 26. 

1861. — Jesus and the Resurrection. Pp. 23. 

1867. — The Theology of the New Liturgy. — Arianism. — Athana- 
sius. — Commencement Address. — Athanasian Creed. — Our Rela- 
tions to Germany. Six articles. Pp. 111. 

1868. — Presbyterian Union Convention. — Dorner's History of 
Protestant Theology, two articles. — Answer to Professor Dorner. 
Four articles. Pp. 226. 

1869. — Origin and Structure of the Apostles' Creed. — The Unit}' 
of the Apostles' Creed. Two articles. Pp. 14. 

1870.— Once for All. Pp. 26. 

1871.— The Revelation of God in Christ.— Education. Pp. 31. 

i£72.— Christ and His Spirit. Pp. 40. 

1873. — The Old Catholic Movement. — Christianity and Human- 
ity. Two articles. Pp. 1i. 



304 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

187 1^. — Apollos : or the Wa}- of God. — Reply to an Anglican 
Catholic. Two articles. Pp. 12. 

1876.— The Spiritual World. Pp. 28. 

1877. — The Testimony of Jesus. — The Spirit of Prophecy. — 
Biblical Anthropolog}\ Three articles. Pp. 49. 

1878. — Sacred Hermeneutics. — The Supreme Epiphany ; God's 
voice out of the Cloud. Two articles. Pp. 83. 

1879. — The Bread of Life : A Communion Sermon. Pp. 35. 

1880.— The Pope's Encyclical. Pp. 46. 

1882.— Christ, the Inspiration of His Own Word. Pp. 41. 

1888. — Inspiration of the Bible. Pp. 36.— Last article. 

Prom the titles of the articles just named it will be seen that Dr. 
Nevin at this time wrote out his views on many of the most pro- 
found questions of the day. No one, it is believed, can read them 
without admiring the ability, courage and the spirit with which 
they were written. In his own peculiar style he developed with 
much vigor the doctrine of the Person of Christ; of the nature and 
attributes of the Church, His Mystical Bod} T ; of the Sacraments; 
the theology of the Apostolic Symbol ; the difference between pa- 
tristic and American Christianity; the relation of Freedom to Au- 
thority, and of Faith to Knowledge; of Christianity to Civilization ; 
and in short the deepest questions of the age. At the same time 
with rare polemic ability, and dexterity, not without some biting 
sarcasm, or a stroke of drolleiy or humor now and then, he attacked 
popular errors, more particularly, religious and political radicalism, 
socialism and the materialistic tendency of the times. — We here 
give in a condensed form the genera] drift of some few of the arti- 
cles which exhibit Dr. Kevin's general system of thought. They 
arrested attention at the time; they have a bearing also on living 
questions at the present day; and in fact very much so, because 
they were in a great measure in advance of their age. 

The Lutheran Confession. — The first number of the Mercersburg 
Review appeared on the 1st of January, 1849, and was followed by 
the Evangelical or Lutheran Review at Gettysburg on the 1st of 
July following. Dr. Nevin gave it a commendatory notice soon 
afterwards in his own organ at Mercersburg. 

"We welcome this review," he writes, "because its banner is un- 
furled in favor of true Lutheranism, in the bosom of the American 
German Church. It is understood to go decidedly for the standards 
and true historical life of the Lutheran Church. This does not im- 
ply that it is to make common cause with the stiff exclusive pedan- 
try of the Altlutheraner, technically so called, who come before us 



Chap. XXYIII] the Lutheran confession 305 

in the German Church as a fair parallel to the similar petrifaction, 
which is presented to our view in the pedantry of the Scotch Se- 
ceders. What lives must move. The Review proposes no substi- 
tution of dead men's bones for what was once their living spirit. 
But this spirit itself it will seek to understand and honor, with due 
regard to the wants of the Church as it now stands. It will not be 
ashamed of the Augsburg Confession. It will speak reverently, 
at least, of the Form of Concord, as well as of the great and good 
men to whom it owes its origin. It will not dream of sundering 
the stream of Lutheranism from its human historical fountain in 
the sixteenth century by the miserable fiction of an American Lu- 
theranism in no living and inward connection with the Lutheranism 
of Europe; the name thus made to stand for everything and the 
substance for nothing. It will not stultify Luther himself, by 
professing to accept his creed and magnify his name, whilst the 
very core of all, his Sacramental faith, without which his creed had 
for himself no meaning or force, is cast aside as a silly imperti- 
nence, deserving only of pity or contempt. The Review proposes 
to stand forth, in one word, as the representative of all true bona 
fide Lutheranism, in the old sense, as.it was held, for instance, by 
Melanchthon in the age of the Reformation, and as it is now held by 
many of the best and most learned men in Germany. This it pro- 
poses to do here on American ground, in full face of the unsacra- 
mental thinking with which it is surrounded on all sides, and in 
full view of the scorn, open or quiet, that is to be expected at its 
hands. In all this, as already said, we unfeignedfy rejoice. We 
are glad that Lutheranism has found an organ, after so long a time, 
to plead its own cause, before the American Church ; and we are 
glad it has found such an organ to plead this cause so ably and so 
well. 

" Are we then Lutheran ? Just as little as we have become Roman. 
As we stand externally in the Reformed Church, we find in it, also, 
the only satisfactory resting place at present for our faith; but we 
believe that Lutheranism and Reform, the two great phases of the 
Reformation, may be brought together with mutual inward modifica- 
tion, so that neither shall necessarily exclude the other; that each 
rather shall serve to make the other more perfect and complete ; 
and we earnestly long for this union; but so long as the antithesis, 
which thus far in itself has been real and not imaginary only, is not 
advanced to this inward solution and reconciliation, we are in 
principle Reformed, and not Lutheran. In particular, we accept 
Calvin's idea of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, as set forth in 



306 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

the Heidelberg Catechism; and abhor the rationalistic frivolity by 
which the nrystery is so commonly denied. 

u But we look upon Lutheranism, in the present stadium of Chris- 
tianity, as a necessar3 T part of the constitution of Protestantism. 
Our idea of Protestantism is, that the two great confessions into 
which it was sundered at the start, the Lutheran and the Reformed, 
grew with inward necessity out of the movement itself, carrying in 
themselves thus a relative reason and right of the same general 
nature with what must be allowed in favor of the Reformation 
itself. Protestantism, therefore, includes in itself two tendencies, 
both of which enter legitimately into its life; while, at the same 
time, each seems to involve the destruction of the other. This, 
however, only shows that the truth of it must hold at last, in some 
way, in such a union of these forces as shall make them to be one. 

" The two original confessions came not thus by accident, but by 
the logical law of the vast fact of Protestantism itself; with a 
necessity, however, which is not absolute but relative, and there- 
fore interimistic, destined, accordingly, in due time to pass away 
in their inward amalgamation ; a result which will also no doubt 
involve a full conciliation of the Protestant principle, as a whole, 
not with Romanism as it now stands, but still with the deep truth 
of Catholicism, from which in the -w&y of abuse the Roman error 
originally sprang. All which may our Blessed Lord hasten, in His 
own time and way. 

" The case being thus, it is plain that Lutheranism can never give 
the full sense of the Protestant Church hj carrying out simply its 
own life in a separate and one-sided wa} T ; but it is also just as plain 
that this is quite as little to be expected from the Reformed confes- 
sion under a like exclusive view. This seems to be a well nigh self- 
proving axiom for such as have any true faith in the Reformation 
as God's work, and any true insight into the constitutional reason 
of the two confessions as its immediate and necessary product. — 
The Reformed Church can never fulfill its mission, either in the- 
olog}^ or practical piety, without the Lutheran. The only sufficient 
and rational adjustment of the antithesis, which holds between the 
two confessions, is such as shall do full justice to the full weight of 
the antithesis itself, bj* bringing its two sides into such harmony 
that each shall be the complement of the other. The problem then 
in the case is not to denounce and damn, nor jet to ignore and for- 
get, but in love to reconcile^ and so surmount the difficulty that is 
found to be really in the way. 

" The old confessional antithesis, which was felt to be so deep and 



Chap. XXVIII] the Lutheran confession 307 

vital in the age of the Reformation, has with us apparently gone al- 
most entirely into oblivion. The age is supposed to have got beyond 
it and to stand on higher ground. — Lutheranism has been in this 
country a perfectly foregone cause. Our Protestantism has planted 
itself wholly on the Reformed side of the old confessional line ; in 
such a way, however, as to make no account of any such line, with 
the assumption, rather, that the ground thus taken covers the whole 
sense of Protestantism, and that it offers no other field properly 
for theological distinctions. Our Evangelical Christianity, in gen- 
eral, shows in this respect the same character. The true Lutheran 
element has no place in it whatever, and Luther would not feel 
himself at all at home in our churches. The Protestantism of New 
England, which in some sense rules our religious life, is the extreme 
Left, we may say, of the Reformed wing of this faith, to which the 
ver} T existence of Lutheranism has come to be a mere byword. 

"And yet, what is Protestant theology as a science, if no account 
is made in it of the vast achievements of the Lutheran Church ? 
Our reigning theology feels itself to be absolutely complete in the 
Reformed shape only, and for the most part goes on the assump- 
tion that all else is now, and ever has been, sheer unbiblical fancy, 
of which, for solid proper purpose in his profession, the minister 
may just as well be ignorant. — No wonder that the whole interest 
should, in this state of things, be so widely treated as a theological 
nullity. One whole side of Protestant theology has thus been here 
in America as good as extinct ; and it has been taken for granted 
in every direction, that it was absolutely full and complete in the 
form simply of the other side. Our theological questions, it is 
well known, turn almost exclusively on this assumption, based on 
Reformed premises only, as if nobody could now dream of includ- 
ing airything beyond these in the conception of Protestantism. 

" Now this involves, of course, a gross insult upon the American 
Lutheran Church itself, which is only made worse by the kind 
courtesies, which may seem, in part at least, to go along with it. 
But such vast wrong done to one whole hemisphere of Protestant- 
ism, whose rights are just as legitimate and clear historically as 
those of the other, must of necessity infer vast wrong to this also, 
as having no power to remain true to itself in any such isolated 
and abstract view. We can hold it for a fixed maxim, that the 
genuine Reformed tendency can continue to be genuine, onty in 
connection with the Lutheran tendency, with which it divided in 
the beginning the universal force of the Protestant movement. It 
can never complete itself by falling away from this entirety, losing 



308 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

all sense of its presence, or treating it as an impertinent and sense- 
less nothing : this mnst amount at last to a falling awaj^ from Prot- 
estantism itself. It can never complete itself, as in the case of 
Lutheranism also, except by recognizing the weight that actually be- 
longs to its twin-born counterpoise, and so leaning towards it as to 
come with it finally into the power of a single life, that shall be 
neither the one nor the other separately taken, but both at once 
thus raised to their highest sense. 

"A Christianity, then, that ignores and rejects in full the Lu- 
theran element can never be sound and whole. On the contrary, 
all such abstractions fill us with misgivings and distrust. We 
have no faith in a religion that takes half of the Reformation as a 
whole. We have no disposition to sit at the feet of a theology, 
that yawns over the vast confessional interest of the sixteenth 
century, as a stale and tedious thing ; that takes no pleasure, of 
course, in the true central church questions of our own time, all 
revolving as they do, more or less, around the same deep problem, 
and struggling towards its solution ; but gives us instead the for- 
mulas and shibboleths only of some single denomination, a mere 
fragment of the Reformed section of Protestantism at best, as the 
quintessence and ne plus ultra of all divinity. No such theology 
can be safe. With inward necessity it tends towards rationalism, 
or the region of thin void space. In due course of time it must 
cease to be Reformed as well as Lutheran, passing clear over the 
true Protestant horizon altogether, with imminent hazard of losing 
finally even its form of sound-words, as far as this may go, in a 
system that revolves all mystery into sheer abstraction, and owns 
the supernatural only as an object of thought. 

"What we have now said may suffice to explain, how it is that 
we are led to hail, with unaffected satisfaction, the appearance of 
the Gettysburg Evangelical Review, set as it is, and we trust also 
powerfully and efficiently set, for the defence of what is compre- 
hended for our common Protestantism in the great and mighty 
confessional interest of Lutheranism. We consider it important 
in this view by itself; but we regard it vastly more important as a 
sign and evidence — one large sign among many others as yet less 
notable — that the American Lutheran Church, not dead heretofore 
but sleeping, is about now to shake off its theological slumbers, 
and address itself as a strong man to the work of its own true and 
proper mission in the general problem of American Christianity. 
It were a burning shame that in such a country as ours the Church 
of Luther as such should not be heard and felt in the ultimate con- 



Chap. XXVIII] the Lutheran confession 309 

stitution of the national faith. Besides, it were a deep and irre- 
parable loss to this faith itself, not to be completed in this way. All 
who take an interest in American Christianity must deprecate the 
idea of its being permanently divorced, — as it has been, for instance, 
thus far in New England — from the deep rich wealth of the old 
Lutheran creed. Our Reformed theology needs, above all things, 
just now, for its support and vigorous development the felt pres- 
ence of the great Lutheran antithesis as it stood in the begin- 
ning. It can never prosper, in any manly style, without this con- 
dition. The very conception of such merely sectarian divinity, as 
something thus scientifically complete within itself, is preposter- 
ous. Let Lutheranism, then, by all means flourish — for the sake 
of that which is not Lutheran. We bid the Evangelical Review 
God-speed." See Mercer aburg Review, Sept. No., 1849. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE Anglican Crisis. — " There are many," says the reviewer, 
"who make it a point to treat the whole subject of the Angli- 
can Crisis with an air of easy superiority and disdain; as though 
there were no room in truth for any rational controversy in the 
case, and so of course no ground for apprehension with regard to 
its ultimate issues, and, therefore, no occasion for any special in- 
terest in its progress. It is wonderful, realty, how easily and how 
soon this unchurchly and unsacramental school in general are able 
to make a full end of this deepest problem of the age, and to gain 
a height of serene conviction in relation to it, that sets them beyond 
the reach of all the doubt and difficulties that seem to surround it 
to minds of another cast and make. To them the whole Church 
question, as it now disturbs the peace of England, is nonsense and 
folly ; they see to the bottom of it at once, and only wonder that 
men of education and sense in the English Church should find the 
least trouble in bringing it to its proper solution. Romanism is a 
tissue of abominations and absurdities from beginning to end; 
Puseyism is made up of silly puerilities, that cannot bear the light 
of common sense for a single moment; and it only shows the misery 
of Episcopacy and the English Establishment, that it should have 
given birth to so sickly a spawn at this late day, or that it should 
now find it so hard a thing to expel it from its bosom. The proper 
cure for all such mummery is to give up the Church mania alto- 
gether, to discard the whole idea of sacramental grace, to fall back 
on the Bible and private judgment as the true and only safe rule of 
Protestantism, and to make Christianity thus a matter of reason 
and common sense. This too is clearly the order and course of the 
age, tending towards this glorious result of independence and free- 
dom; and it maj^, therefore, well be expected, that all these church 
crotchets will soon follow the other rubbish of the Middle Ages 
into the darkness of perpetual oblivion and night. 

"But if ever a movement deserved to be honored for its religious 
earnestness and for the weight of intellectual and moral capital 
embarked in it, such title to respect may- be fairty challenged by 
the late revival of the Catholic tendency in the Church of England. 
The movement is of far too high and ominous a character, has 
enlisted in its service far too great an amount of powerful intellect 
and learning and study, and has gone forward with far too much 

(.310) 



Chap. XXIX] the Anglican crisis 311 

prayer and fasting, and inward spiritual conflict, and has taken hold 
far too deeply of the founclatians of the best religious life of the 
nation, and has led and is still leading to far too many and too 
painful sacrifices, to be resolved with any sort of rationality what- 
ever into views and motives so poor as those which are called in to 
account for it by the self-sufficient class of whom we now speak. 
To charge such a movement with puerility, to set it down as desti- 
tute of all reason, and in full contradiction to the clear sense of re- 
ligion, or as a mere rhapsody of folly without occasion or meaning 
in the proper history of the Church, is to make ourselves puerile 
and silly in the highest degree. Plainly it is the part of true wis- 
dom rather to pause before such an imposing movement with a 
certain measure of reverence, whether our sympathies fall in with 
it or not, to study it carefully in all its proportions, and thus to 
turn it to some purpose of instruction and profit that may be help- 
ful in the end to others as well as to ourselves. There is no excuse 
for treating such a fact with mere ribaldry and scorn. We are 
bound in all right, as well as in all good conscience, to take it for 
granted that it is not without meaning, whether we have the power 
to understand it or not. It is high time, we think, in view of what 
has taken place already in the history of this Anglican movement, 
and of what is. now taking place — not to speak of events that are as 
yet only casting their shadows before them, — that our popular cle- 
claimers on the subject, whether of the rostrum or the press, should 
pull in their zeal a little, and learn to proceed somewhat more mod- 
erately in their philippics and squibs. They are, in the usual style, 
quite too wholesale and sweeping. All excess at last cuts the sin- 
ews of its own strength. 

" The catholic and sacramental tendency in religion is something 
too great to be set aside lawfully by a flippant dash of the pen, or 
by a mere magisterial wave of the hand. Never was there a case, 
in which it could be less reasonable and becoming to sit at the feet 
of fools for instruction; and it is truly humiliating to see how 
readily this is done by a large part of the nominal Protestant world, 
to whom every strolling mountebank is welcome that comes among 
them as a lecturer on Romanism ; as though the deepest and most 
sacred themes of religion,. and questions that have carried with them 
the earnestness of death itself for the most earnest and profound 
minds, age after age, might be satisfactorily settled in five minutes' 
time with a flourish of idle declamation, by men whose want of 
serious thought is, as it were, visibly stamped on their whole face. 

" What makes this Anglican crisis particularly solemn for serious 



312 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

thinkers is the force it has to bring out sensibly the difficulties and 
contradictions that belong to the present state of the Church on 
different sides. In this respect, it may be taken as of a truly diacriti- 
cal nature ; for it goes to probe and expose the doubtful character 
at least of much which was rested in before with a sort of passive 
acquiescence as good and sufficient, simply because it was put to no 
practical inquest and trial. 

" Who that thinks seriously, for instance, can fail to be struck 
with the fearfully ominous posture, into which the whole open and 
professed no-church interest is thrown, including not only those 
who repudiate the name and notion of a Church out and out, but 
that large class of Protestants rather, which has come to look upon 
the Church as only a notion or name, disclaiming all faith in its 
proper supernatural character as we find this asserted in the Apos- 
tles' Creed. — One grand effect now of the crisis, which is going for- 
ward in England, is to put a full end to all such doctrines and de- 
ceitful twilight, and to drag this question so into the full blaze of 
day that all men may see and know where they stand with regard 
to it, and judge of themselves and of one another accordingly. 

" The main significance of the crisis lies just here, that it goes so 
thoroughly to the heart and core of the Church Question, and shuts 
men up to the necessity of answering it in a direct wa} r , if they 
answer it at all, with full view of what that answer means. The force 
of the question in the end is nothing less than this : Whether the 
original catholic doctrine concerning the Church, as it stood in uni- 
versal authority through all ages before the Reformation, is to be 
received and still held as a necessary part of the Christian faith, or 
deliberately rejected as an error dangerous to men's souls and at 
war with the Bible. 

" To reject it is to break faith and communion not only with such 
men as Anselm, Bernard and others of like spirit in the Middle 
Ages, but with the fathers also of the fifth and fourth centuries, 
the Grregories, Basils, Augustines, and Chrysostoms, who shine as 
stars of the first magnitude in that older period of the Church, and 
still more with the entire noble army of martyrs and confessors in 
primitive times, clear back, as it would seem, to the very age at 
least next following that of the Apostles,; to break faith and com- 
munion, we say, with all this vast and glorious 'cloud of witnesses,' 
not only on a mere circumstantial point, but on a question reach- 
ing to the inmost life of Christianity itself, is be} T ond contradiction 
a thought of such momentous gravity as might well be expected to 
fill even the most confident with some measure of concern. 



Chap. XXIX] the Anglican crisis 313 

■" Here comes into view the proper significance of the controversy ^ 
with regard to baptismal grace. The idea that the holy sacraments 
are divine acts, that they carry in them a mystical force for their 
own ends, that they are the media of operations working towards 
salvation, which have their efficacy and value, not from the mind 
of the worshipper, but from the power of the transaction or thing 
done itself, reaches back plainly to the earliest ages of the Church, 
and has been counted a necessary part of the Christian faith by 
the great body of those who have professed it through all ages. In 
this view, we find it identified very directly from the first with the 
idea of regeneration itself. So through the whole period before 
the Reformation, and the Protestantism of the sixteenth century, 
the Church had no thought of breaking here with the faith of pre- 
vious ages. — The question is in truth thus central in its nature. It 
involves at bottom the whole force of the alternative, Church or 
No-Church, in the form already presented, as a solemn choice in 
fact between owning or disowning the creed of all Christendom 
in former times. — We ought to see and feel that it is a question, 
not for Episcopalians, as such only, but for all Protestants. 

" So much for the no-church, no-sacrament party of the day, 
whether in the English Establishment or on the outside of it, whether 
in Great Britain, we may add, or in this country. It is exposed 
here to a sifting probation, which is well adapted to bring out the 
true nature of its principles, and to make them for considerate men 
an object of wholesome apprehension and dread. But the crisis 
carries with it a sifting efficacy also in other directions. It bears 
with trying severity on the pretensions of Episcopacy, which in 
England and this country admits either too little or too much for 
the stability of its own claims. 

"Take the Low Church ground in its communion, and it sinks 
at once plainly to the order of the sects around it, Which have, by 
their open profession, discarded the proper church theory alto- 
gether ; it is simply among the various denominations of the Chris- 
tian world, arguing from Scripture and reason, as it best can, for 
its own peculiarities, but not venturing to make them, in any way, 
of the ver}^ essence of faith. In this view Episcopacy becomes at 
best a simple outward institute, a matter purely of authority, and 
so in truth a matter of mere ceremonial and form ; of the same 
order, precisely with the law and letter of other distinctions, in the 
strength of which the Baptists, the Scotch Seceders, and such like- 
bodies, are accustomed to make a parade in Jewish style of their 
great regard for God's will. The Episcopalian pleases himself in 
20 



314 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

exactty the same way with the notion of following the primitive 
and apostolic law of church government and worship by acknowl- 
edging three orders in the ministry and the necessity of a public 
liturgy. — The true High Church theory requires something far be- 
yond this, and is virtually surrendered in fact when it is made to 
rest on any such false and insufficient foundation. 

" That the Church principles of this large class of Episcopalians 
are confessedly only Evangelical Puritanism under the drapery of 
Episcopal forms, is becoming fast apparent to all men. Their 
peculiarity of faith and worship is vastty too small, their Protestant 
maxim much too large and wide, to justify the ground they take 
over against the other divisions of God's sacramental host, con- 
fessedly as evangelical as themselves. — It would be far more honest 
and manly, we think, if the school here noticed, both in England 
and in this country, would at once forsake Anglicanism as it now 
stands, and either pass over into the bosom of other denomina- 
tions, or, if more to their taste, form a new Episcopal sect in open 
and free fellowship with other sections of orthodox Protestantism. 

"But what shall we now say of that other form of Episcopacy, 
which calls itself high onhy because it is more exclusive in theory 
as well as practice, and lays greater stress on the legal obligation 
of its system, while the whole is taken still in the light of a merely 
mechanical appointment or law. We see not truly how Episco- 
palianism in such shape deserves to be considered a whit less 
pedantic, to sajr the least, than the exclusiveness of the Baptists, or 
Sececlers under a like outward legal form. In both cases the letter 
is made to go before the life, to underlie it as first in order and im- 
portance, instead of being joined with it in concrete union, and so 
deriving from it continually all its force. The Baptist pretends to 
be scrupulously exact in obeying the law of baptism, according to 
his own view ; and so he makes a religious merit of following the 
injunction as he supposes to the letter, unchurching practically all 
others — on the principle that the essence of religion is implicit sub- 
mission to God's authorit}^ as made known b}- the Bible. 

" But now we ask, what better is it than this to make Episcopacy, 
with its outward succession from the time of the Apostles, in and 
of itself, the article of a standing or falling church — on the prin- 
ciple simply, that Christ and His Apostles are supposed to have 
prescribed this form, and that we have no right to vary from what 
must be regarded thus as strictly a Divine rule. It is possible to 
take very high ground with this view, to be very aristocratic and 
.very exclusive ; but the view itself is low, and proceeds on the 



Chap. XXIXJ the Anglican crisis 315 

want of faith in the proper supernatural character of the Church, 
rather than on the presence of such faith; on which account, the 
farther it is pushed, it only becomes the more plainly empty and 
pedantic. Being of this character, it is found to thrive best, like 
all pedantries, in periods of mechanical humdrum and sham ; whilst 
it is sure to be exposed in its true vanity, when the religious life 
is called to pass through a general crisis, as at the present time. 

" The more the Church question is agitated in an earnest and 
serious way, and the more men's minds are fixed on its real mean- 
ing, the more evident must it abmjys become that no such mechanical 
view of it as this can ever solve its difficulties or satisfy its requi- 
sitions. Either the Church rights and prerogatives are nothing and 
form no special property whatever in its case, or else they must 
have a far deeper and more solid ground on which to rest than the 
order of bishops, or the use of a liturgy, regarded as a simply out- 
ward appointment. No jure divino constitution, in any such stjde 
as this, can uphold in a real way for faith the mystery of the One, 
Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church. The premises are either too 
narrow for the conclusion, or else a great deal too wide. 

"Faith in the Church, in the old ecclesiastical sense, is not a stiff 
persuasion merely that certain arrangements are of divine appoint- 
ment ; it is the apprehension rather of the Church as a living super- 
natural fact, back of all such arrangements, having its ground and 
force in the mystery of the Incarnation, according to the order of 
the ancient Creed, and communicating to the marks and signs, by 
which it is made visible, every particle of virtue that is in them for 
any such end. This idea goes vastty beyond the notion of Epis- 
copy, Presbyterianism, or saiy other supposed divine right ecclesias- 
tical polity of this sort ; it looks directly to the original promise, 
Zo, I am with you always to the end of the icorld; and lays hold 
first and foremost of the mystical being of the Church, as no 
mechanism of dead statutes, but as the actual presence of an ever liv- 
ing revelation of grace; a strictly heavenly constitution on earth,— 
Christ's Body the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, — in virtue 
of which only, but in virtue of which surely, all organs and func- 
tions belonging to it have also a superhuman and heavenly force. 

" If Episcopacy and a liturgy be found to grow forth conclusive- 
ly from the nature of the Church, in such catholic view, it is all 
right and good; let them come in legitimately for their proper 
share of respect. But it ought to be plain 'unto all men diligently 
reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors,' we think, that 
the grand weight and blunder of the question concerning the na- 



316 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

ture of the Church rest not at all on these distinctions, and that to 
put them, therefore, ostensibly in an}^ such form, must ever smack of 
pedantry and betray a poor and false sense of what this question 
means. All turns on the idea of the Church, and this not only ma}', 
but must be settled to some extent in our minds, before we can go 
on to discuss to real purpose the divine obligation of Episcopacy, 
Presbyterianism, or any other polity to be of such necessary force. 

" In this view it is, that the question of sacramental grace is more 
profoundly interesting than the question of Episcopacy. It goes 
much nearer to the heart of the main question, the grand ultimate 
subject of controversy and debate; for the Sacraments are the 
standing sign and seal of whatever power is comprised in the 
Church; and as we think of this, so invariably will we also think 
of them; the one conception giving shape and form alwa} r s directly 
to the other. But even here the right church sense is something 
more general and deep than the right sacramental feeling. The no- 
tion of grace-bearing sacraments, sundered from the sense of the 
Church as still carrying in it the force of its first supernatural con- 
stitution, would indeed be magical, and must prove quite as pedan- 
tic in the end as a supreme regard for the bishops in the same dead 
way. We must believe in a divine church, in order to believe in 
divine sacraments, or a divine ministry under any view. 

" It cannot be denied again, that the course of this controversy, 
as thus reaching to the very heart and soul of the Church Question, 
is powerfully- sifting and trying the ecclesiastical pretensions of the 
English Establishment as a whole. First in view is the right and 
solemn question of ecclesiastical supremacy, the true and rightful 
headship of the Church and its legitimate relationship to the State. 
Who can doubt, but that the ground here taken by Cardinal Wise- 
man and the Romanists in general, is of a higher character than 
that occupied by Lord John Russel and the English Establishment. 
On one side, the civil power is made to be the fountain of ecclesias- 
tical authority ; on the other, the authority is taken to be of an 
order whollr distinct from the State, independent of it and, for its 
own end, above it. 

"In the Establishment itself also, man}' have felt all along the 
disgrace and burden of the relation, and have often with feeble 
voice protested against it or tried to explain it awa}\ But never be- 
fore probably was there such a glaring exposure of the misery of 
it, as that which is taking place just at the present time. The 
whole Tractarian movement has been against the idea of such civil 
supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, in proportion precisely as it 



Chap. XXIX] the Anglican crisis 31*7 

involved a revival of church principles generally, and a return to 
old catholic sentiments and ideas. The Gorham controversy might 
seem to have been providentially ordered, to bring out in broad 
caricature and irony the true sense of the farce, when it was sure 
in this way to receive the most earnest attention. Here a the- 
ological question, not of secondary but of primary consequence — 
going just now as we have before seen to the very root of Protest- 
antism — is settled in the last instance by purely civil authority ; 
and the English Church, with the Grace of Canterbury at the head, 
in the presence of the whole world dutifully succumbs to the inso- 
lent and profane dictation. No wonder the Bishop of Exeter, with 
such earnestness as he had in his soul, should feel such a crisis to 
be tremendously solemn. 

" The exodus of the Free Church of Scotland has been widely 
glorified, as a grand exhibition of martyrdom for the very principle 
now in view, the independence of the Church in church matters, 
the ' right of King Jesus ' as the Scotch phrase it, in opposition to 
all worldly political power whatever. The fountain of ecclesiasti- 
cal law and order, the true and proper primacy in matters of relig- 
ion, was loudly proclaimed in this case to be, not the British throne 
or parliament, but the supreme judicatory of the Church itself; 
and in defence of this principle, the best men of Scotland, with 
Chalmers at their head, showed themselves ready to brave, if need 
were, the greatest penalties and pains. Puseyism too has gained 
credit deservedly, for only seeing clearly, and saying plainly, that 
the civil supremacy in matters of religion is an abuse at war with 
every right conception of the Church, and for proposing, though 
thus far only in a weak and ineffectual way, a return to the old 
doctrine of ecclesiastical independence; and for all right minded 
men, certainly, the Bishop of Exeter just now, by even the partial 
stand he is trying to make for this doctrine in the midst of the 
universal defection from it that surrounds him, is a spectacle of 
more moral dignity than the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the 
whole horde of bishops besides at his back, truckling in base sub- 
serviency to the nod of the civil power. — There can be no question 
in this issue, which side answers most impressively to the true 
ideal of the old church life, as it comes up to our minds when we 
think of such men as Cyprian, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Ambrose 
or Augustine. 

"But the issue here is not simply as between two hierarchies, 
the one culminating in the Pope and the other in the Queen, in the 
form now stated : it goes be} T ond this to the universal question of 



318 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

religious liberty, the right of Christians to worship God according 
to the dictates of their own conscience, and to the principles of 
church toleration in the broadest sense ; and in this view it con- 
cerns clirectty all sects and parties on the outside of the Govern- 
ment Church, no less than the membership of this favored com- 
munion itself. Is it not the pride of the age, to be considered 
liberal, enlightened, tolerant in matters of religion ? Is not this in 
particular the boast of Protestantism ? 

" The truth, however, is that there is real room in the whole case 
for uneasiness, not because Romanism may be seen to have power, 
but because Anglicanism is felt to be weak. The constitutional 
dencienc}^ of this S3'stem, its want of ability to assert and carry out 
in full the proper functions of a Church, is in the way of being ex- 
posed as never before bj~ the progress of the present crisis ; and so 
searching has this become in its operation, that there is now good 
reason to expect that it will lead in due time to the breaking up of 
the Establishment altogether. 

"It is becoming more and more difficult for the two tendencies 
at work in its bosom, to move in any sort of union together; and 
we are not surprised to find the party which still makes earnest with 
Catholic truths leaning powerfully towards secession, whether it be 
to form a new body or to fall into the arms of Rome. The seces- 
sions which have already taken place in this last form are exceed- 
ingly significant. No movement of the sort equally as grave has 
taken place since the Reformation. The importance of it lies not 
just in the number of converts, though this is serious, but in 
their character rather, and the circumstances of the change. The 
fact, however, as is well known, is but a part of a much wider and 
still more serious fact. 

" The Anglican Crisis in this way involves more than what at once 
appears on its face. It is undermining confidence in much that 
has heretofore had a show of truth and strength, writing Tekel on 
it, and turning it for the consciousness of men into moekerj- and 
shame. One thing is certain : the way is opening for a new revival 
of infidelity in England, in close connection with the latest and 
worst forms of German rationalism, which is likel} T to go beyond all 
that has appeared there under this name before, and which can 
hardly fail to be powerfully felt also on this side of the Atlantic. 
It is remarkable too, that this alarming development seems to run 
in some measure parallel with the revival of the Church tendency, 
as though it formed its natural alternative and reverse. It has 
entered the Universities of both Oxford and Cambridge. Puse}'- 



Chap. XXIX J the Anglican crisis 319 

ism in some cases has fallen over, with easy somerset, to sentimental 
Straussisra. The movement includes a brother of Fronde, and a 
brother of John Henry Newman. — The stream of the Church ques- 
tion, so easy to wade through seemingly at first, is fast getting 
too deep for the legs of this system to touch bottom, and it must 
either swim beyond itself or sink. 

" It affords us no satisfaction to come to this melanchohv conclu- 
sion. We would feel it a great relief rather, to be able to find in 
Anglican Episcopacy a truly rational and solid answer to the prob- 
lem of which we speak, our Ararat of rest for the ark of Protestant- 
ism, so long drifted by any and every wind over what has been thus 
far a waste of waters only, without island or shore. For most firmly 
are we convinced that no other sect, or fragment of the general 
movement, carries in itself, as such, the power and pledge of any 
such rest, or is ever likely to prove hereafter more than a weak ap- 
proximation at best, on the most narrow and most partial scale, to 
the true ideal and proper perfection of its own cause. The whole 
reflection is calculated to make one sad. 

" There are here not simply two general alternatives, but we may 
say four. The first is a deliberate giving up of the sacramental 
system altogether, the only proper end of which — short of parting 
with the Trinity and Incarnation — is Baptistic Independency, the 
extreme verge of unchurchly orthodoxy. The second is full de- 
spair of Protestantism and reconciliation in form with the Church 
of Rome, as we have it exemplified with thrilling solemnity in the 
present English secessions. A third way of escape may be sought 
in the belief or hope of a new miraculous dispensation on the part 
of God Himself, through some special agency armed from his pur- 
pose with fresh apostolical commission and corresponding powers, 
such as may supercede at once both Romanism and Protestantism 
as systems that have become historical and dead. Swedenborgian- 
ism plants itself on this ground; and it is also the ground taken by 
Irvingianism — a far more respectable and significant birth of the 
modern church life than many, having no insight into its natural 
history, are disposed to allow; not to speak of the wretched carica- 
ture we have of the same tendency in Morrnonism, which also, in its 
own way, claims to be a revival in full of the otherwise lost powers 
and gifts of the Apostolic age. 

" A fourth and last resort, the only one it seems to us which is 
left for the thoughtful, is offered in the idea of historical develop- 
ment; by which, without prejudice to Catholicism in its own order 
and sphere, or to Protestantism next as a real advance on this in 



320 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

modern times, though with the full acknowledgment of the faults 
and views of both S3^stems, it is assumed that the whole present 
state of the Church is transitional only and interimistic. Ac- 
cordingly it would be destined through the very crisis, which 
is now coming on — not just by a new miracle setting aside the 
whole past as a dead failure, but in the wa}^ of true historical 
progress, which makes the past always the real womb of the pres- 
ent and the future — to surmount in due season the painful con- 
tradictions (dialectic thorns) of the Protestant controversy as this 
now stands, and so to carry it triumphantly forward to its own last 
sense, the type neither of St. Peter nor of St. Paul but of both 
brought together by St. John, in a form that shall be found at the 
same time to etherealize and save, in the same way, the last sense, 
also, and rich wealth of the old Catholic faith. 

" No scheme can command our regard, which nullifies virtually 
the doctrine of the indestructible life of the Church, as well as the 
Divine promise on which that promise rests, by assuming a full 
failure and frustration of all the sense the Church had in the be- 
ginning. On this ground we, therefore, have no patience with that 
bald Puritanism, which fairly buries the Church for a thousand 
years and more, in order to bring it to a more striking resurrec- 
tion in the sixteenth century. As little can we be satisfied, on the 
same ground, with the visions of Emanuel Swedenborg: the}^ pro- 
ceed throughout on the assumption that the Church, as it started 
with the Apostles, has run itself out, both as Catholicism and 
Protestantism, and that the world is to be helped now onty by a 
new revelation appointed to take its place. Irvingism involves, 
more or less distinctly, as it seems to us, the same dismal thought; 
and if this be so, it needs no other condemnation. If it came to a 
necessary choice between such a view and Romanism, the advant- 
age lies decidedly, we think, on the side of this last. 

"But, as we have seen, we are not thrown at once on any such 
desperate election. We majr cast ourselves upon the theory of his- 
torical development, so as to make Protestantism itself, with all its 
painfully acknowledged miseries, the main, though by no means 
exclusive stream, by which the general tide of the original Chris- 
tian life is rolling itself forward, not without fearful breaks and 
cataracts, and many tortuous circuits, to the open sea at last of that 
grand and glorious ideal of true Catholic Uruiy, which has been in 
the mind of all saints from the beginning. 1 ' See Mercersburg Re- 
view, July No,, 1851, 



CHAPTER XXX 

BROWNSON'S Quarterly Review. — " We are not among those," 
says Dr. Nevin, "who consider 0. A. Brownson, Esq., a mere 
weathercock in religion, whose numerous changes of faith are suffi- 
cient of themselves to convict his last position of falsehood and 
folly. We can see easily enough, in all his variations, a principle 
of steady motion in the same general direction. He started at one 
extreme, only to be carried by regular gradation to another. Unita- 
rianism and Romanism are the opposite poles of Christianity, free- 
dom and authority, the liberty of the individual subject and the 
binding force of the universal object, each carried out by violent 
disjunction from the other, into nerveless pantomine and sham. 
Thus seemingly far apart,, they nevertheless are in reality always 
closely related ; just as all extremes, by the force of their own false- 
hood, have an innate tendency to react, pendulum-wise, into the 
very opposites from which they seem to fly. Hence, the familiar 
observation, that Romanism in many cases leads to rationalism and 
infidelity. 

"We are not among those again, who look upon Mr. Brownson 's 
championship of Romanism as either weak or of small account. 
His mind is naturally of a very acute and strong character ; clothed 
with a measure of dialectical agility and power, such as we rarely 
meet with on the field at least of our American theology. His 
reading evidently is extensive and varied ; though he is not free 
from the infirmity, we think, of passing it off frequently, in an in- 
direct way, for something more than its actual worth. 

"He allows himself, for instance, to refer at times to the German 
philosophers and theologians, as if he were perfectly at home in 
their speculations; whereas we have never met with airy evidence 
of his having any more thorough acquaintance with them after all 
than that second-hand information, which is to be had through the 
medium of a foreign literature, particularly that of France. ' On the 
contrar} T , it is sufficiently clear, that he has not by any means 
mastered the best and most profound results of the later German 
thought; he makes no proper account of the history through which 
it has passed; affects, indeed, to make light of all history, as ap- 
plied to the progress of philosophy, and shows himself at fault 
especially, when the discipline of this thought precisely should 

(321) 



322 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

come to his help, or, at all events, be intelligently refused, if found 
wanting, and not merely waved with magisterial hand to one side." 

For most purposes Mr. Brownson used to be sufficiently ego- 
tistic in his Review. It was his, and wlrr should it not be the organ 
through which his personality should sound forth whenever there 
was an occasion for it. It is quite amusing now to read on its 
pages that Prof. Park, Emerson, Neander, Xewman, Schaff, Bush- 
nell, and other lights of like character, in their most profound at- 
tempts to get at the intrinsic reason of things, simply go over the 
ground which was familiar long since to his feet, but which a logic, 
still deeper than theirs, compelled him afterwards to abandon — 
credat Judaeus Apelles. — See his Be-view, Oct., 1845, p. 511 and p. 
540.— Jan., 1847, p. 84.— April, 1847, p. 276.— Oct., 1849, p. 497. 

But notwithstanding certain drawbacks, Mr. Brownson's actual 
familiarity with the several departments of literature, history and 
theology, went considerably beyond the range of most of his one- 
sided opponents on the opposite side. Very few writers, perhaps, 
in this country or Europe equalled him in the vigor or the lu- 
cidity with which he wielded his pen. He was a foeman whose 
steel it was difficult to resist, especially when it was directed 
against one windmill after another in his chivalrous marches 
through an imaginary country. For a certain class of persons he 
was perhaps a knight of the first water, by far eclipsing Moehler in 
theological questions, and Cardinal Wiseman in his knowledge of 
ecclesiastical relations. He was a born Puritan, steeped b} T educa- 
tion in the element of New England life ; intimatelj^ familiar with 
Puritan methods of thought and forms of life ; and with a sur- 
prising agility and dash ready to seize the old batteries of New 
England polemics, and turning them against his enemies. 

He tells us in one place, that his soul recoiled from the mortal 
sin of being inconsequent, or of adopting premises which he was 
not prepared to carry out to their necessaiy and farthest extreme. 
To such a hazardous undertaking he brings the whole strength of 
his Puritan nature, as if determined to be a veritable Puritan 
Romanist, wilfully forcing his own will to fall in with the new theory 
of faitH which he was thus brought to embrace. He professed to 
abjure philosophy in religion, and take all in the wa3 T of simple 
authority. Thus firmly set in his own mind to follow out his new 
principles without any regard to consequences, Mr. Brownson appar- 
ently had no trouble in comptying with even its most extreme de- 
mand. Of course he was a full-fledged Ultramontanist, and here in 
America, a downright Italian, in the plenitude of his obedience 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 323 

and faith. He not only believed in the infallibility of the Church, 
but, in advance of the Roman curia and the bishops, he proclaimed 
the infallibility of the Pope also in his day. "The Papacy," he 
affirmed, " is the Church, and the Pope is the vicar of our Lord Jesus 
Christ on earth, and if you war against the Pope, it is either because 
you would war against God or because you believe God can lie." 
He was equally submissive, most dutiful to the bishops and the 
priests, who in his eye formed the truth and authority in the Church, 
and from whose lips the common layman is required to accept both 
without doubt or contradiction. His tone towards those, his supe- 
riors, when, contrasted with his confidence and self-reliance in other 
directions, was humble to say the least, if not sycophantic and 
servile. His Revieiv, theologically considered, he wished to be 
simply the echo of the proper masters of his faith, the Bishop of 
Boston and his learned clergy. 

This humble submission of such a distinguished convert must 
have satisfied most Catholics of the sincerity and thoroughness of 
his conversion, although some, and perhaps man}^ of them, instinct- 
ively felt that he carried matters too far with his merciless logic. 
But notwithstanding this humble submission, he believed all the 
while that he knew someting also, and this manifested itself very 
palpably during the war. He became eminently patriotic, fought 
the battle of the Union in his organ, and regardless of priests or 
bishop, assumed to be a political autocrat among his Catholic fel- 
low-citizens, in which he was less successful than when on prancing 
steed he essayed to go forth to slay the Protestant hordes. 

As already said Mr. Brownson shrank back from committing the 
sin of being inconsequent, and justice to his memory requires us 
here to give the leading consequences of his mechanical logic, 
which he himself endorsed fully. Dr. Nevin stated them faithfully, 
and as they for the most part refuted themselves, he had more time 
to devote to the fundamental principles in dispute. 

"His theory puts an end to all private thinking in religion, and 
must be carried out on all sides, no matter whether it violates our 
common sense or not. The maxim, Out of the Church, applies to 
the Roman communion exclusively, and shuts out as much as pos- 
sible every sort of hope in favor even of the best men bej^ond its 
pale. — Protestantism in its best shape is only a sham, that always 
leads to infidelity and Nihilism. — The Reformation was wholly 
without reason or necessity, and had its rise in worldly motives far 
more than in any true zeal for the glory of God. — Luther and Calvin 
were bad men, and moreover tools of men worse than themselves. 



324 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

— The Church, as it stood before, was always moving in the right 
direction; whilst this revolution, so far as it prevailed, served only 
to hinder and embarrass the march of Christian improvement, caus- 
ing the sun-mark to go back on the dial-plate of the world's civil- 
ization, Grocl only knows how far. — Its only representation at this 
time, accordingly, is found in transcendentalism, pantheistic athe- 
ism, and communism. — The Roman Catholic Church, both before 
and since the Reformation, has been the prop and patron of all 
that is good in the world, whether in the form of religion, science, 
politics, or social life. — The advantages often claimed in favor of 
Protestant nations are more specious than solid. — Puritanism, es- 
pecially here in America, is little more than a bag of wind. — The 
Puritan Professor Park, with the tail of a Dutch goose in his cap 
for a plume, ignorantry accuses Catholicit}- of being hostile to the 
mind and of being deficient in great philosophers and eminent 
preachers. — Saving some branches of plrysical science, Protestants 
have really contributed nothing of any real importance to the prog- 
ress of the human mind. — Everything, except material industry, 
degenerates in their hands ; and yet they have the singular impu- 
dence to accuse the Catholic Church of injuring the human mind. 
— The Catholic cantons in Switzerland are more enlightened than 
the Protestant. Sic ? Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, bear comparison 
with Holland, Denmark, and Scotland. — The laboring classes are 
much more degraded in England than they are in Austria, in Italy 
or in Spain. — The Austrian clerg} 7 are not inferior to the Prussian, 
nor the Bavarian to the Saxon. — To represent the French clergy as 
inferior to the English betra} r s an ignorance or a recklessness that 
we were not prepared for even in our Andover Professor. — We posi- 
tively deny, that in moral and intellectual science, properly so 
called, Protestants have made the least progress, or that their phil- 
osoplry has ascertained a single fact or a single principle not known 
and recognized by the Schoolmen." But of this jam satis. Thus 
Mr. Brownson, under the pressure of his mere intellectual or logic 
screws is forced to see evil, and evil only in Protestantism, and in 
Romanism only goodness, beauty and grace. 

As a matter of course the reviewer of Brownson could not enter 
into any argument to disprove the truth of such propositions. 
Time was too precious, and it moreover would have placed him in 
the same line as the popular Protestant declaimers against Rome, 
which he thought amounted to nothing more than empty sound. 
Before, however, he proceeded to consider the fundamental princi- 
ples involved in the controversy, he merel} T allowed Protestantism, 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 325 

which was of age, for a moment to speak for itself in the facts of 
history. 

"The Reformation comes before ns in history," he says, "not as 
a side current simply in the stream of life, but as a force belonging 
plainly to its central channel. It had its ground and necessity in 
what went before. Whole ages looked towards it previously as its 
proper end. It is not more clear that the civilization of the modern 
world grew up in Europe, than it is that its growth and progress 
produced the Reformation. — Protestantism, plainly, has not been 
an interlude simply, during the past three hundred years, in the 
drama of the world's life. It belongs to the history of the period in 
the fullest sense of the term. — The honor of God, the credit of re- 
ligion, requires, therefore, that a movement which has so covered the 
field of history for so long a time, should in some form be acknowl- 
edged to carry with it a truly historical force, and to enter into the 
universal mission and plan of Christianity for the salvation of the 
world. — We ought to have no patience with men, who turn the first 
three centuries of Christianity into a sheer waste of sand, to suit 
their own miserable prejudice. But why, we ask, should we have 
any more patience with this style of. thinking, when we find it ap- 
plied to the period since the Reformation, than we have for it as 
applied to the period before? Is it less arbitrary and pedantic, less 
frivolous and profane, to treat the great fact of Protestantism, 
clearly belonging for three hundred } r ears past to the central his- 
tory of the world, as a nullity, a dream, the oversight of a sleeping 
Christ, than it is to look upon a like term of centuries a thousand 
years before, in the same dishonorable light? 

" Romanists must learn to find some sense at least, and not mere 
devil's-play in the Reformation, if they expect to be heard respect- 
fully in the scientific world in opposition to its claims. If Mr. 
Brownson should set himself to denounce and ridicule the Alle- 
gheny Mountains or the Mississippi river, as useless or absurd 
accidents in nature, we do not see why it would be more reproach- 
ful to his philosophy and religion, than it is for him to put scorn 
in like style on the vast creations of history, that come up before us 
during the past three hundred years in the form of Protestantism ; 
for sure we are, that a continent, shorn of its highest mountains 
and mightiest streams, would not miss its own universal sense more 
than the tract of the world's general life must do, if the events of 
the last three hundred years were swept from the face of it as a 
mere impertinence or blank nothing." — Thus the assertions of bold 
declaimers on Romish platforms are reduced to an absurdity as 



326 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

soon as the}' are compared with the facts of history. The} T must, 
however, have their basis in some system in which they take their 
rise. Dr. Xevin, therefore, directs attention to the theory under- 
lying Romanism, meets Mr. Brownson on his own ground, and 
throws him on the defensive. We here reproduce briefly this war 
in Africa, in which logic cut logic and oppressed truth asserted its 
sovereignty. 

" The theory of Romanism involves a general wrong against our 
human constitution, in not allowing the ordinary law of freedom 
to have force in the sphere of religion, where precisely the divine 
order requires its presence to complete itself. The mind of man 
cannot fulfil its mission by following blindly a mere external force 
of any kind, but by the activity of its own intelligence and will, 
both as general and individual. It must move in the light that 
springs from itself, and by the power as law it generates contin- 
ually from within. This moral constitution, as in the world of 
nature, involves many complex relations, on a vast and magnifi- 
cent scale, but the conception of freedom pertains to it as a 
whole, as a necessary universal distinction. Take that away and 
its very idea falls to the ground. It is no longer a human con- 
ception in the proper sense of the term. According to Mr. 
Brownson the human mind is simply a passive recipient of a for- 
eign action brought to bear on it in an outward way. Whilst 
man's life under the influence of Christianity unfolds itself by a 
self-movement, in the way of thought and will, and is thus to at- 
tain to perfection, the theoiy of Romanism supersedes all this by 
another law altogether. The supernatural comes in as the outward 
complement of the natural in such a way as to nullifj- its force in 
all that pertains to its higher sphere, thus leaving the gap between 
the two just as wide as it was before. 

u This wrong against human nature manifests itself in the vio- 
lence which the individual mind is made to surfer, according to this 
theoiy, in favor of what is taken to be the general. The existence 
of truth is something objective, universal and independent of all 
private thought or will; but as thus objective, it must be, at the 
same time, subjective, must enter into the sphere of our thoughts 
and wills, in order that it may become a reality to us. The object- 
ive without the subjective is a mere abstraction. The general as 
such, to be a law or measure to the individual, must take a concrete 
form in the life of the world, which resolves itself at last into the 
thinking and working of single minds. But Romanism sets aside 
the anthoritv of this order, which evervwhere asserts itself as a 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 327 

universal force in the constitution of our nature. Christianity is 
thus taken to be of force for the world under a simply abstract 
form, an outwardly supernatural revelation, transcending the whole 
order of our common life, and not needing nor allowing the activity 
of man himself as an intelligent and free subject, to be the medium 
in any way of its presence and power. Authority is made to be 
all and freedom nothing. Authority is, therefore, not mediated at 
all by man's actual life, and is in no sense living or concrete, but 
altogether, mechanical, rigid and fixed. 

" Freedom, however, is a great deal more than any such outward 
consent to the authority of the law. It is a life in the law, union 
with it, and the very form in which it comes to its revelation in the 
moral world. If we place the law as an objective force on the out- 
side altogether of the intelligence and will of those who are to be its 
subjects, we at once convert it into an abstract nothing. This is the 
natural extreme into which Romanism runs, against which the Ref- 
ormation formed a legitimate and absolutely necessary reaction and 
protest. — It is as true now, as it was at the beginning of the six- 
teenth century, that the actualization of truth in the world is some- 
thing which can be accomplished only through the intelligence and 
will on the part of the world itself; that liberty, in its genuine sense, 
is not simply the outward echo of authorit}^ but the very element 
of its life, and the coefficient of its power in that which it brings to 
pass; that man is no passive machine merely in the process of his 
own salvation; that the free activity of the individual subject in 
the world of mind can never be paralyzed nor overwhelmed by the 
sense of the law as a nature foreign and transcendent throughout to 
its own nature, without involving in the end the overthrow of na- 
ture altogether. — The theory rests on a wrong conception of what 
authority is in the world of mind, and so on a wrong conception of 
the true nature of the Church, as the divinely constituted organ and 
bearer of Christ's will among men to the end of time." 

" The natural result of such an unnatural separation of liberty and 
law, of the rights of the subjective and the claims of the objective, 
in the end inflicts a grievous wrong on the second of these interests 
no less than on the first. The true idea of authority in the moral 
world requires that it should actualize itself under a concrete form, 
through the general life of humanity and in the way of historv. 
But with the high-strung theory of Mr. Brownson, all this is ruled 
out. It is thrust out of the way most effectually by the conception 
of an abstract ministry, or ecclesia docens, in which the gift of in- 
fallibility is confined in a purely outward supernatural way, with- 



328 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

out airv regard to any mediation of the life of the Church as a whole. 
This ecclesia docens is no organic product or out-birth of the new 
creation among believers generally whom it was appointed to save. 
Its prophetical, priestly and kingly functions are not after all the 
activity of Christ's mystical bod} 7 , actualizing itself as a living body 
by appropriate organs created for such a purpose. The ministry 
is to be regarded as a bod} T independent of the Church, and it must 
possess a life of its own; in a word, it is a separate organization of 
its own, through which the higher powers of Christianity must 
needs be carried forward, by a wholf^ distinct channel, for the use 
of the world from age to age. These powers too belong to it in a 
mechanical, magical way, and not according to the ordinary law of 
truth and power among men. 

" There can be no room with this view, as a matter of course, for 
the conception of an3 T thiDg like a progressive actualization of the life 
of the Church in the form of authority. As the infallibility which be- 
longs to her is independent of her natural constitution, abstract and 
not concrete, so it also lies wholly on the outside of her proper 
human presence in the world. But to be out of history is to be 
out of humanity itself. — Humanity, in all other cases, accom- 
plishes its destiny by organic co-operation, carried forward in the 
form of histoiy. Truth is brought to pass for it through the medium 
of its own activity, the whole working towards its appointed end hy 
the joint ministry of the parts, in such a way, however, as to be some- 
thing more than these separate^ taken. So it is in the sphere of 
science; so in the sphere of art; and so in the sphere of politics 
and social life. But in the sphere of the Church, as it stands since 
Christ, according to the Romanist doctrine, we are required to take 
all differently. As a supernatural constitution, it must not in any 
sense conform to the order of nature. It must not be organic, nor 
historical, nor human, in its higher life; but one long monoton} 7 
rather of mere outward law and authoritj^, superseding or crush- 
ing the natural order of the world, and contradicting it, age after 
age, to the end of time. The Roman system carries in it thus a 
constant tendency to resolve the force of Christianit} T into magic, 
and to fall into a mere opus operatum in its worst sense. 

"This brings us," sa^ys Dr. Nevin, "to notice, more particularly 
in the next place, the general relation in which the supernatural is 
taken b} r this S3^stem to stand to the natural, and its corresponding 
view of divine revelation. The two worlds are held to be wholly 
disjointed and separate, the one from the other, so that any connec- 
tion which is formed between them is regarded as outward o\i\y and 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 329 

not in the way of our common life. The two are sundered by an 
impassable gulf, as regards inward constitution and being. This 
abstract conception of the supernatural, that refuses utterly to flow 
into our life in any way with the natural, underlies the whole theory 
of Romanism as set forth by Mr. Brownson; and much of our 
Protestant orthodoxy, it must be confessed, rests upon precisely 
the same abstract supernaturalism in the view it takes of the Bible 
as the medium of divine revelation, without seeing that from such 
premises we are shut up at last, without help or escape, to the 
Romanist conclusion. The reasonableness of faith turns not at all, 
according to this school, on any correspondence in which it stands 
directly with its own contents, but purely and exclusively on its 
relation to the extreme authority on which they are accepted as true. 
" This theory is convicted of error by the clear proof of a real 
union of the supernatural with the natural, in the persons of the 
sacred writers. The truth it reveals is conditioned by the mind 
and education of the men who gave it utterance, and through them 
by the living human relations in the midst of which they stood. 
No two prophets think alike or speak alike. Their inspiration then 
is no abstraction, no divine mechanism, but something that truty 
descends, with all its divinity, into the order of nature. And what 
shall we say of Him, in whom all prophecy and inspiration became 
at last complete? Was it His office simply to stand between the 
two worlds that met in His person, and report mysteries from one 
to another for the use of faith in a purely outward way ? What is 
then meant by the declaration : The Word became Flesh and dwelt 
among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth? Surely, if the Gos- 
pel mean anything, we have here, at least, the supernatural order 
linked in real organic union with the natural, and showing thus the 
capacity of this last, as well as its need, to receive into itself such, 
higher life as its own proper complement and end. It will not do, 
in the face of such a fact as the Incarnation, to say that the real- 
ities with which faith has to do in distinction from reason are 
wholly without light or evidence for this last in their own nature, 
and as such to be taken on the mere authority of God, ascertained 
in some other way ; that is, in such a sense that a man might be 
supposed to be infallibly sure first that he has this authority to go 
upon, and so be prepared to accept any and every proposition as 
true, on the strength of it, with equal readiness and ease. What is 
revelation, if it be not the actual entrance of the supernatural in: 
some way over into the sphere of the natural? 
21 ' 



330 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

"All revelation, as distinguished from magic, implies the self-ex- 
hibition of God in a real wa}^, through the medium of the world in 
its natural form. To a certain extent, we have such a revelation in 
the material universe. The outward creation is the S} T mbol, mirror, 
shrine and' sacrament of the divine presence, as a supernatural fact, 
in the most actual way. The word of prophecy and inspiration is 
the gradual coming forth of eternal truth into time, in a like real 
way, through the medium of human thought and speech ; a process 
which completes itself finally in the full domiciliation we may say 
of the Infinite Word in the life of the world by Jesus Christ. — In 
Him, most literally and truty, the supernatural order came to a liv- 
ing and perpetual marriage with the order of nature ; something 
which it could not have, if the constitution of the one had not been 
of like sort with that of the other — if man had not been made in 
the image of God — so as to admit and require such a union as the 
last and only perfect expression of the world's life. It lies then in 
the nature of the case, that Christ can be no abstraction, no soli- 
tary portent, in the midst of the world. 

"But now, if this be the relation of the supernatural in Christ 
Himself to the sphere of nature, it is not easy certainly to acquiesce 
in any theory of the Church, by which this is taken to be the me- 
dium of revelation in a wholly different style. An abstract Church 
is as much at war with the true m3 T stery of Christianity as an ab- 
stract Christ. Such a view works back unfavorably on the whole 
idea of revelation, and in the end especially wrongs the character 
of Christ. We are very far from believing, that the divinity of a 
revelation turns on its having no common life with humanity; on 
the contrary it seems to us to become complete in proportion pre- 
cisely as the supernatural, by means of it, is brought to enter most 
fully into the conditions of the natural. 

" The theory carries with it finally, as it seems to us, a wrong con- 
ception of the true nature and power of faith, involving in the end 
the very consequence it seeks professedly to shun, namely, the sub- 
ordination of it to reason, or its resolution into mere logic. It 
goes on the assumption that the supernatural, with which faith has 
to clo, is so sundered from the natural, as to admit no direct ap- 
proach or apprehension from that side ; that truth in such form is in- 
evident for the mind wholly in its own nature, and without force of 
reason intrinsically to engage its assent; that the mind is moved 
to such assent in its case accordingly, not by any motives either in 
itself or in the object set before it, but by something extrinsic to 
both, the weight of an immediate authority which is felt to be fully 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 331 

valid as a ground of authority, without regard to the nature of 
what is thus taken in trust one way or another. The subjective 
and objective come to no union of contact whatever. The gulf 
between is sprung only by testimony. 

"We object to the way in which faith is here opposed to reason. 
Its opposition is properly to sense, and to nature as known through 
sense ; to reason only so far as this is taken for the understanding 
in its relation to such knowledge. Faith is the capacity of per- 
ceiving the invisible and supernatural, the substance of things hoped 
for, the certification of things not seen (Heb. XI. I); which, as such, 
does not hold on the outside of reason, any more than this can be 
said of sense, but opens to view rather a higher form of what may 
be called its own proper life, in which it is required to become com- 
plete, and without which it must always remain comparatively help- 
less, blind, and dark. — Faith does not serve simply to furnish new 
data for thought in an outward way, but includes in itself also, 
potentially at least, the force of reason and knowledge in regard to 
its own. object. It stands in rational correspondence with its con- 
tents, and involves such an apprehension of them as makes the 
mind to be in some degree actually in their sphere. Faith touches 
its object as well as sense. — When the authority for faith is thus 
taken to be extrinsic to the supernatural object, as with the Romish 
system generally, we are thrown at last on the very rationalism, 
which it is sought in this way to avoid. 

"The Church we hold too to be the medium of the Christian rev- 
elation, the organ by which Christ makes himself known in the 
world, and which is to be reverenced on this account, through all 
ages, as His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. But it 
is all this, not in a mechanical, quasi-magical way, as a witness set 
forward to propound the truth in outward style only, a supernatural 
automaton with the Pope at Rome for its mouth-piece. — Faith 
starts then in Christ. Because we believe in Him, we believe also 
in the Holy Catholic Church; and not in the reverse order. 

"Protestants, who insist on sundering the Reformation from the 
church life of the previous period, do as much as they well can to 
ruin their own cause. Unless it be the product of all earlier Church 
history, it can deserve no faith. Let it appear on the other hand, 
that the causes which led to it, under God, were in full force for 
centuries before; that they are seated in the life of the modern 
world as a part of its intrinsic nature and constitution ; that this 
operation is to be traced back to the world-historical epoch, which 
laid the foundation of modern society amidst the crumbling ruins 



332 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of that which went before ; and it becomes at once to the same ex- 
tent difficult to resist the conviction, that it belongs to the true 
sense of Christianit}", and that it came to pass by the finger of God. 
Such is the actual state of the case. 

" The new form of humanity brought in by the Northern Bar- 
barians did not furnish material for re-civilizing Europe in its old 
form, but offered elements which were not previously at hand for 
the creation also of another order of civilization ; by which in the 
end Christianity was to become more complete than it could ever 
have become under the first order. Out of this new order of Chris- 
tian life, made possible only through the Germanic nature as dis- 
tinguished from the old Roman, sprang with inward necessity at last 
the Protest of the Reformation. Mr. Brownson, as we have said, 
sees this, more quick of vision here than many Protestants ; and 
sets himself to forestall, as best he can, the weight it carries against 
his own cause. ' We frankly confess, 1 he says, 'we are Grseco- 
Roman, and to us all tribes and nations are barbarians, just as the}^ 
recede from the Grseco-Roman stand. — Nowhere else does history 
show us man receiving, under all the aspects of his nature, so high, 
so thorough, so symmetrical, and so masculine a cultivation, as un- 
der this wonderful civilization.' This is the climax of culture hu- 
manly considered. Add Christianity to it, ' and you have a civiliza- 
tion beyond which there is nothing to seek.' Tried bj^ this standard, 
the Middle Ages cannot stand the test. The Church labored to 
civilize them, as well as she could, according to the old norm, with 
which she has a native affinity; but this could be done only so far 
as the nations were brought to exchange the barbaric nature for the 
Roman. ' Wherever the barbaric element has remained predominant 
in the national life as in Russia, Scandinavia, Prussia, Saxony, 
Northern Germanj^, or where, through exterior or interior causes, 
it has regained the predominance, as in England and the once 
Christianized Oriental nations, the nation has relapsed into heathen- 
ism, or fallen off into heresy or schism. In several of the nations 
which have fallen off from the Church, the old barbaric institutions, 
traditions, customs, and hereditary hatred of Grreco-Roinan civiliza- 
tion, always survived in the heart of the people, and nourished a 
schism between its national life and its Christian faith.' In all this 
there is much truth. The Roman nations remain Papal, while the 
Germanic nations, in virtue of a new element peculiar to themselves, 
could never make over their will in the same wav to mere outward 
rule, and so in the end have become Protestant. It is perfectly 
clear that nationality has exercised a determining influence on this 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 333 

great issue from the beginning. Protestantism is the child of the 
modern civilization, the Teutonic life, and not of the Grneco-Roman. 

"But what is now the true significance of this fact? The 'old 
Grseco-Roman civilization,' says Mr. Brownson, 'must be held 
normal for all ages; your Teutonic life consequently is at fault, 
just in the measure of its variation from this rule; and so Protest- 
antism is found to be simply part and parcel of the same general 
abnormity, the final upshot, we may say, of the war carried on with 
the Church by the refractory spirit of these Northern Barbarians 
from the beginning.' A convenient theory truly. But how violent, 
at the same time, and arbitrary. Only see what it involves. The nor- 
mal order of the world naturally considered, its best possible form 
and true ultimate sense, just as it was ready to go fully into the 
arms of Christianity, is suddenly dashed to the ground and turned 
into universal wreck by the inundation of an entirely new life, un- 
civilized, unlettered, absolutely rude and wild. Europe planted 
with elementary nations, requiring the growth of centuries to bring 
them to any mature and settled political form; the work of a thou- 
sand years laid upon the Church, only to regain in some measure 
the loss created by this sad catastrophe; a new civilization in time, 
which refuses, however, to fall fully into the new Christian order, 
carries in it more or less a semi-barbarous, heathenish character; 
and issues finally in an open rebellion against the Church, which at 
the same time bears away with it palpably the central powers and 
activities of the world's natural life, with a momentum which cen- 
turies have no power to check or restrain! It surely needs no 
small gift of faith seriously and steadily to give credit to all this. 
Was the wreck of the Grseeo-Roman culture an accident? Did the 
Northern Barbarians come on the stage of Europe without God's 
will and plan? Was there no end to be answered for Christianity 
and the world, by the taking down of the former civilization, the 
bringing in of new material, the open field created for the building 
up of another life, and the work of so many centuries employed in 
the accomplishment of this great object? 

" These questions, it seems to us, carry in them their own answers. 
The true use to be made of the whole case, then, is just the reverse 
of Mr. Brownson's view. God moves in history. It must, there- 
fore, have a meaning. It must especially minister to Christ and 
His Church ; for is not He head over the whole of it, for this very 
end ? If a sparrow fall not without His e}^e, how could the Vblker- 
wanderung take place by chance ? The fact that He should so re- 
move the old, and make room for the new. and call in the historical 



334 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

process of a thousand years to come to His object, is itself enough 
to show, not only that the new civilization thus sought was to be 
different from that which was rejected in its favor, but also that it 
was to be of a superior order, of a more vigorous constitution, better 
suited to the wants of humanity and more answerable to the inte- 
rior demands of Christianity. This superiority of the modern 
civilization, then, turns on the new element which has been brought 
into it by the Germanic or Barbarian life, in distinction from the 
old Roman. It amounts to nothing, that Mr. Brownson stigmatizes 
this as heathen ; for the old Roman life was originally heathen too ; 
and it is purely gratuitous to assume that Christianity might not 
appropriate and assimilate to itself the peculiarities of a barbarous 
nationality as fully and as completely as those of the Grseco- 
Roman. Its province is not to stand on the outside of nature in 
the way of foreign help, but to enter into it, to clarify it, and to 
fill it with divinity after its own form and type. The new civiliza- 
tion thus brought to pass carried in itself from the beginning the 
principle of freedom, which gave birth, as Christ had all along de- 
signed, to the fact of Protestantism. Its distinctive power, of 
course, fell in with this fact. The Romanic nations were left be- 
hind ; not without some great ulterior purpose, we ma} T presume ; 
while the Germanic nations, obedient to the law of their life, are 
carrying the sense of history in the Protestant direction. It does 
not follow at once, we know, that Protestantism is all that the 
world needs for its salvation, because it now carries all temporal 
interests in its stream. 

" Outward activity and strength are not of themselves the guar- 
anty of grace. The Protestant movement may prove morally un- 
equal to its own problem. Still this cannot change the significance 
of the fact as now stated. It belongs to the reigning power of the 
world's civilization. It has its seat in the spirit of the world's 
civilization. It has its seat too in the spirit of the nations that go 
with it, and their spirit now rules the course of humanity, as some- 
thing plainly in advance of the spirit that meets us in nations still 
bound to the authority of Rome. In this view, if we believe in 
Christ, we are bound to acknowledge in it, if nothing more, } T et 
surely the necessary medium of transition at least for the Church 
of God into a higher and better state. Not to do so, turns the 
past into a riddle and shrouds the future in despair. Protestant- 
ism, as it now stands, at all events has the floor of history, carries 
the word of the age ; and the last sense of Christianity, the grand 
scope of Christ's Mediatorial reign, is to be reached through it, by 



Chap. XXX] brownson's quarterly review 335 

its help and intervention in some way, and not by its being turned 
aside as only an important accident, or mere nullity, in the course of 
this all conquering dispensation. 

"It will be seen that our object has been to convict the general 
Roman principle of falsehood, by showing it to run into untenable 
consequences, and to be at war with the true principle of our life. 
This is not with us, of course, an argument for the mere negation 
or denial of the same principle, as the true meaning and force of 
Protestantism. We have before tried to expose the rock on that 
side; and our object now in setting forth the dangers of the whirl- 
pool, is certainly not to recommend the first as on the whole less 
false and terrible than the second. Rationalism, the resolution of 
faith into the mere mind and will of man (with the Bible or without 
it), under all its forms and shapes, we religiously abhor and hate. 
With the reigning slang on that side, we have no sympathy what- 
ever. Here then the question comes up, How are these extremes 
to be at once both avoided ? And no question can well be more great 
and solemn. We pretend not now, however, to answer it. Enough 
so far, if we have been able to show that it needs and demands an 
answer; that the truth is not, in this case, in either of the alter- 
natives, separately taken, which for the common understanding seem 
to cover the whole ground; that Christianity, in one word, must 
find its true sense between them, in a form of life that shall be the 
union of both. It is much to be sure of what is false and wrong 
here, even if at a loss still to master the full meaning of what is right. 
The best preparation for solving the problem of the age is to be 
well satisfied that the problem really exists, and so to feel earnestly 
that it calls for solution." 

Previous to the appearance of this critique of Brownson' l s Quar- 
terly Beview in the January and May numbers of the Mercersburg 
Bevieiu, 1850, Dr. Nevin had been charged with being one-sided and 
Romanizing. He had held up false Protestantism and exposed it 
in its negative emptiness, and to some it seemed as if he was in some 
sort of secret sympathy with Romanism. The review of Brownson 
fairly defined his position in regard to the Roman system on the 
other side. Starting out from his own theological and philosophical 
principles, he sought to convict it of falsehood, in which he no 
doubt believed he was successful. As his philosophy remained sub- 
stantially the same throughout life, we may take it for granted that 
the conclusions arrived at in his criticisms of Brownson, who repre- 
sented Roman Catholic orthodoxy at the" time, remained substan- 
tially the same. Mr. Brownson replied to Dr. Xevin's review of 



336 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

his Quarterly in courteous terms, admitting that he had found him 
quite a different opponent from those he had hitherto been accus- 
tomed to encounter. His reply consisted largely of an effort to 
show the errors into which his s} 7 stem led, particularly pantheism, 
the prolific source of all other religious heresies. Such a deduc- 
tion might be expected even from Dr. Nevin's Protestantism, be- 
cause Mr. Brownson had, as he affirmed, " shown over and over 
again that all Protestantism, whatever its form, has an invincible 
tendenc}^ to Pantheism." To this Dr. Nevin made a brief reply, in 
which he proceeded to prove that Mr. Brownson's theory of the uni- 
verse was just as mechanical as his theolog}^ or view of the Christian 
Church. The discussion thus drifted into questions of pure meta- 
ph} T sics, in which there seemed to be no common ground, and Dr. 
Nevin withdrew from the controversy, with Mr. Brownson's high 
regard for him as a controversialist. — See the January and Ma} r 
numbers of the Mercersburg Review, 1850. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

TT^ARLY Christianity. — The last, and by far the most original 
•J-^ contributions to the solution of the Church Question which 
Dr. Nevin made in the Mercersburg Review, consisted of two 
articles on Early Christianity in the year 1851 and four on Cyprian 
in 1852. In many respects, they were remarkable. Because they 
seemed to 3d eld very liberally to the claims of the Roman Catholics 
on various points, they were regarded at the time as sufficiently 
startling. It was at a period when Protestants had become very 
sensitive in consequence of the conversion of a number of Pusey- 
ites in England and this countiy to the Roman Catholic faith, and 
it was predicted by some that Dr. Nevin himself would also fall 
over and walk in the footsteps of Newman and Manning. But he 
did nothing of the kind. He simply tried to do what he had been 
doing before, honestly and earnestly, in his efforts to sound the 
profound problem concerning the Church Question, which of its 
own accord pressed upon his mind and gave him much agony of 
heart — a veritable angina 'pectoris. — He passed through the fiery 
conflict, without deserting his banner, without sacrificing his 
principles, and without losing his common sense. Amidst a 
babel of warring sectarians, according to the light given him, and 
without claiming for himself infallibility, he endeavored to point 
out the way, as he had done before, to true Catholic unity, by 
which the universal Church of Christ might be again restored to 
peace and concord, hoping that others might study the subject, 
and if they knew of a better way than his, that they would make 
it known. In his book on the Mystical Presence, he had shown 
that a considerable portion of the Protestant Church had drifted 
away from the landmarks of the Reformation on the vital points 
connected with the Lord's Supper, and now six years later, he 
proceeded to show that there was a similar drifting awa}^ in the 
Protestant world from primitive or early Christianity, if not in 
spirit, at least in the form or embodiment of Christian life. — The 
articles referred to, if read at the present time, produce a much less 
startling effect than they did thirty-seven years ago. The times 
change and we change with them. 

The discussion is made to start out with two quotations, one from 
an American Congregational minister and the other from an Eng- 

(337) 



338 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

lish Bishop, which were employed to serve as texts, or rather as oc- 
casions, for the discussions that followed. Dr. Leonard Bacon, of 
New Haven, had just written a letter from L} T ons, in France, and 
published it in the New York Independent, in which he had said 
that "in that city the Roman Catholic religion is more nourishing, 
with the indications of living zeal, and more deeply seated in the af- 
fections of the people than in any city on the continent of Europe. — . 
But the worship, instead of being offered exclusively and directly 
in Christ's name to the one living and true God, is offered to deified 
mortals and chiefly to Mary, the Mother of God. Instead of being- 
addressed only to an invisible God, it is offered to images and pic- 
tures (and those, for the most part, of no superior description), 
and to dead men's bones. Not in such places, nor where such wor- 
ship is offered, are we to look for the true succession from the 
apostles and primitive martyrs, the true Catholic Church, which is 
the body of Christ." That, as he thought, was to be found in a 
small Evangelical mission in Lyons, in which Rev. Adolphe 
Monod had labored successfully some years before, in regard to 
which he said, " that he did not know where to look for a more 
satisfactory representation of the ideal of primitive Christianity 
than may be found in the city which was made illustrious so long 
ago by the labors of Irenseus, and by the martyrdom of Pothinus 
and Bland in a." 

The other quotation, which helped to generate thought, in Dr. 
Nevin's mind, was taken from an old book, of "Travels in 
Europe in 1823," by Rev. Daniel Wilson, better known after- 
wards as the Bishop of Calcutta. In these travels he came to 
Milan, Italy, where St. Ambrose once labored, who, in his opin- 
ion, was a true Christian, loving the Saviour and depending on 
his merits for justification, much in the same wa} r as Protest- 
ants generally profess to do. The English rector, however, was 
compelled "to witness with grief and indignation all the super- 
stitions of Popery in their full triumph." After an English ser- 
vice on Sunday he went into the great cathedral to see the cate- 
chising, or rather Sunday-schools, instituted hy St. Charles Bor- 
romeo, already in the sixteenth century. Each school had a 
small pulpit, with a cloth in front, bearing the motto of the saint, 
" Humilitas." He pitied these poor children thus taught the corrup- 
tions of Popery ; still he was willing to believe that some good was 
done in these schools. " The Catholic catechisms," he sa} T s, " con- 
tain the foundation of the Christian religion, a general view of 
Scripture histoiy, explanations of the creation and redemption of 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 339 

mankind, some good instructions on the moral law, sound state- 
ments on the divinity of Christ, and the Holy Trinity ; some ac- 
knowledgment of the fall of man, and the necessity of the grace 
of God's Holy Spirit; with inculcations of repentance, contrition, 
humility, self-denial, watchfulness, and preparation for death and 
the judgment. Still all is wofully mixed up with superstition, 
and error, and human traditions, and even the most pious men of 
that communion do not enough distinguish them." 

To Mr. Wilson, Borromeo was a very interesting character, but 
somewhat of a myth until his return to England, when, after con- 
sulting his "books, he was vexed that he had been so long ignorant 
of his history and character. After reading Milner's Church His- 
tory, he came to the conclusion, "that his habits of devotion, his 
self-denial, his zeal, his fortitude, his humility, and especially the 
unbounded and almost unparalleled benevolence, ascribed to him 
by universal consent, would lead one to hope that notwithstanding 
the wood, hay and stubble accumulated on it, he was building on 
the true foundation, Jesus Christ. — The actions of his life may lead 
one the most to hope that this tender hearted prelate was indeed 
animated with the fear and love of his Saviour. — My materials are 
scanty, especially as to the spiritual state of his heart and affec- 
tions; but charity rejoices to hope all things in such a case." 

To all this Dr. Xevin remarks, "that one can hardly help feeling 
somewhat amused with the evident embarrassment in which the good 
Yicar of Islington finds himself with his facts. With the instance 
of Ambrose in the case before us, he can get along without any 
serious difficulty, taking Milner's Church History for his guide, and 
holding fast always to the common Anglican theory of a marked 
distinction between the Christianity of the first four or five cen- 
turies, and that of the thousand years following. There are hard 
things to understand in the piety of Ambrose and Augustine, even 
as we have it portrayed to us in Milner; for which, however, an 
apology is found in the supposition, that standing as they did on 
the borders of the great Apostacy which was to follow, they came 
accidentally here and there within the folds of its impending shadow, 
without still belonging to it properly in the substance of their faith. 
But the idea of any similar exhibition of apostolical religion from 
the same see of Milan, under the full-blown Papacy and in open 
communion with its corruptions — and all this too, in the middle of 
the sixteenth century, and in the person of one who had been em- 
ployed to draw up the Roman Catechism for the Council of Trent 
— was altogether another matter, and something not provided for 



340 AT MERCERSBTTRG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

plainly in any way by our tourist's previous theory. The good 
account he hears of Borromeo perplexes him. 

" Subsequently, however, it came into his mind to look into the 
soul of the Catholic saint in this way; and now every doubt as 
to the genuineness of his piety was forced to retire ; so that in the 
second edition of the same book we have finally a free, full, and al- 
together jo} T ful acknowledgment of the fact, that in the person of 
Borromeo the Roman communion actually produced, so late in the 
sixteenth century, out of its own bosom and as it were in the very 
face of the Reformation itself, a veritable saint of like station and 
piety with the great St. Ambrose of the fourth century, and worthy 
even to be set in some sort of comparison with the Protestant 
saints, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin. Under huge incrustations of 
Popish superstition, may be clearly traced still, in the extraor- 
dinary case, the lineaments of a truly evangelical faith, an actual 
diamond of grace, formed, no one can tell how, in the very start, of 
what might seem to be mostly at war with its whole nature. The 
case is accordingly set down as a sort of grand exception to com- 
mon history, the next thing to a lusus naturae in the world of grace. 
Anselm, Bernard, Thomas a Kempis, Fenelon and a few other like 
celebrities, perhaps, names 'rari nantes in gurgite vasto,' are re- 
ferred habitually to the same convenient category or rubric. They 
are spiritual curiosities, which no one should be expected to under- 
stand or explain." 

Having given these statements of representatives of opposite 
wings of Protestantism, Dr. Nevin proceeds to consider the theory 
underlying them, and joins issue with them both on the church ques- 
tion. In the mind of the vicar he discovers two false conceptions, 
which he felt compelled to combat. In the first place, his estimate 
of the extent to which real piety has existed in the Catholic Church, 
both before and since the Reformation, is in no sort of agreement 
with the truth. In the second place, his imagination that this piety 
is in no sense the proper product of the Catholic religion as such, 
but something violently exceptional to its natural course, is not a 
whit less visionary and unsound. These opinions were not simply 
the judgment of a single Episcopalian in England nor of a Puritan 
divine of high standing in America, but entered largely into the 
Protestant thinking of the day, so that Dr. Nevin lost sight of them 
as the notions of individuals and aimed his arguments against the 
general spirit out of which they sprung. 

In regard to the first point, the Doctor was well aware that public 
opinion in Protestant ranks, in those days, was as a general thing 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 341 

very sensitive. For a Protestant theologian to say anything favor- 
able of the Catholic Church exposed him to prosecution, or the 
suspicion that he was not true to his faith ; but our fearless inves- 
tigator of historical truth at Mercersburg was not moved, by any 
consideration of this kind, and he felt compelled by his candor, as 
well as his native honesty, to declare what he believed to be the 
truth. The Popes, from time immemorial, had been anathematizing 
the Protestants, although he regarded them as his baptized chil- 
dren; and they in return had been doing the same thing to the 
Pope and his Church in their own individual capacities, and on 
their own responsibility. Dr. Nevin had been brought up in this 
same hatred towards Rome, but he had studied Xeander, and hav- 
ing arrived at his theological manhood, he had changed his mind in 
regard to such matters. A reaction set in which carried him in the 
opposite direction, something that surprised many persons and led 
some people to think and say that he was rushing headlong into 
Romanism, whilst occupying a responsible position in Protestant 
ranks. From the Reformation downwards seldom has a Protestant 
theologian ventured to say such favorable things of the Roman 
Catholics as the author of these articles on Early Christianity. He 
believed that it was necessary, at the time, for him to do so in order 
to place Protestantism itself on its proper basis as well as to throw 
light upon the Church Question, which noctes et dies pressed itself 
upon his thoughts. We here give a few specimens of his utter- 
ances : 

"Of all styles of upholding Protestantism, we may s&y that is 
absolutely the worst, which can see no sense or truth whatever in 
Catholicism, but holds itself bound to make it at every point as 
bad as possible, and to fight off with tooth and nail every word 
that may be spoken in its praise. Such wholesale and extreme 
pugnacity may be very convenient ; as it calls for no discrimina- 
tion; it requires neither learning nor thought, but can be played 
off under all circumstances by almost any polemic, with about the 
same effect. Its strength consists mainly in calling nicknames, in 
repeating outrageous charges without regard to any contradiction 
from the other side, in thrumming over threadbare common-places, 
received by tradition from the easy credulity of times past, in huge 
exaggerations, vast distortions, and bold, insulting insinuations, 
thrown out at random in any and every direction. But however 
convenient all this may be, requiring little reading and less thought, 
and no politeness nor charity whatever, it is high time to see that 
it is a system of tactics, which needs in truth only a slight change 



342 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of circumstances at any time to work just the opposite way from 
that in which it is meant to work. The vanity and impotenc}^ of 
it must become apparent in proportion precisely as men are brought 
to look at things with their own e}^es; and then the result is, that 
sensible and well-bred people, not only those who go by the text- 
book of a sect, but such as move in a wider range of thought and 
have some better knowledge of the world, political and literary 
men, seeing how they have been imposed upon by the current slang, 
are very apt to be taken with a sort of quiet disgust towards the 
whole interest which they find to be thus badly defended, and thus 
to look favorably in the same measure on the other side, as being 
at so many points plainly an injured and persecuted cause. 

"It is a sheer prejudice to suppose, in the first place, that cases 
of sanctity and true godliness have been, or are now, of only rare 
occurrence in the Roman communion. Any one who is willing at 
all to look into the actual history of the Church, to listen to its 
own voice, to study its institutions, to make himself acquainted 
with its works, will soon find reason enough to rejoice in a widely 
different and far more favorable view. To make our opposition to 
Romanism of any weight, the first condition would seem to be 
clearly, that we should have made ourselves acquainted with it on 
its own ground, and that we should have taken some pains to learn 
from the system itself what it means and wills. But of all that army 
of zealots, who hold themselves perfectly prepared to demolish it at 
a blow, through the stage or press, how few are there probably who 
have ever felt it necessary to get their facts from other than the 
most common Protestant sources. Take our ministers generally. 
Has One in fifty of them ever examined seriously a Catholic work 
of divinity, whether didactic, practical or historical? An ordinary 
anti-popery assault implies no preparation of this sort whatever; 
but rather a dogged purpose only, not to hear or believe a single 
word the Catholics sa}' for themselves, while everything contrary 
to this is forced upon them from other quarters, as the voice and 
sense of their system. The sooner all such indecencies can be 
brought to an end the better. They help not Protestantism, but 
serve only to involve it in reproach." — Such language from a Prot- 
estant theologian thirty-eight years ago was ominous and sufficient 
to subject him to the very grave suspicion with being in some way 
in collusion with the Church of Rome. But times have changed. 
Protestants have imbibed more liberal views of history and facts, 
and if the Bishop of Rome still pronounces his anathemas, it is no 
longer deemed necessary for us to hurl them back again at the 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 343 

Vatican from Protestant camps. Romanism is Christianity — of 
the Graeco-Roruan type — as Mr. Brownson was compelled to admit 
— and not something as bad as heathenism, as some persons used 
to say and write. Dr. Yan D,yke, in the article referred to in the 
Presbyterian Review in 1881, made use of language quite as strong 
as that given above, and no one seemed disposed to call him to ac- 
count. Obiter dictum, he does not hesitate to say, "that the ma- 
jority of nominal Christians, including multitudes of the ablest and 
purest of mankind, believe in transubstantiation." 

"But in the second place," says Dr. Xevin, "it is just as blind a 
prejudice again to suppose that the piety of the Roman church, 
such as it is, springs not from the proper life of the system itself, 
but is there rather by accident, and as something out of place, so 
to speak, in spite of the unfriendly connections with which it is sur- 
rounded; so that it needs ot\\y to be torn up from the soil in which 
it thus happens to stand, and transplanted into truly evangelical 
liberty, where it might be expected to thrive and nourish at a much 
better rate. The nature and, as it were, normal tendency of Catholi- 
cism, in the view of this prejudice, is not to piety at all, but only 
to superstition and sin ; for it is taken to be a systematic conspir- 
acy against the doctrine of grace from the beginning; and hence 
when We meet with the phenomenon of a truly evangelical spirit 
here and there in its communion, as in the case of Pascal or Fenelon, 
we are bound to see in it a wonderful exception to established law, 
and to admire so much the more the power of the evangelical prin- 
ciple, which is sufficient even in such untoward circumstances to 
bring to pass so great a miracle. No one, however, can study the 
subject to any extent for himself without being led to see that the 
very reverse of all this is the truth. Catholicism is inwardly fitted 
for the production of its own forms of piety, and owes them to no 
foreign source or influence whatever. Its saints are not exotics, 
that pine after other climes and skies, but products of home growth, 
answerable in all respects to the conditions that surround them. 
To place them in other relations would be, not to advance, but to 
cripple their life. Borromeo was constitutionally a Catholic in his 
piety, and not a Protestant. The same may be said of Fenelon, of 
Philip de Neri, of Anselm and Bernard, of Ambrose and of the old 
church fathers generally. The piety of all of them has a complex- 
ion, which is materially different from any that we meet with in 
the modern Protestant world. We mean not to call into question 
the reality of this last, or its high worth; all we wish to say is, that 
it is of another character and order, and that we find that the saint- 



344 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

liness in the Roman Church is strictly and legitimately from itself 
and not from abroad. To Protestantize it even in imagination, is 
to turn it into caricature, and to eviscerate it at last of its very life. 
What could the early church fathers do with themselves in New 
England? 

"And just so it is with the piety of this Church in general. It 
is fairty and truly native to the soil from which it springs. That 
Church with all its supposed errors and sins has ever had power in 
its own way to produce a large amount of very lovely religion. If 
it has been the mother of abominations, it has been unquestionably 
the mother also of martyrs and saints. 

" To deal with Romanism to any purpose we must get rid of the 
notion that it carries in it no truth, no grace, no principle of re- 
ligious activity and life; that it is as bad as infidelit}^, if not a good 
deal worse; that it lacks all the attributes of a church, and is purely 
a synagogue of Satan or a mere human confederacy, for worldly 
and unhallowed ends. 

" The New York Observer lately affirmed that ' Romanism and 
Socialism are essentially anti-Christian, and many wise and good 
men regard infidelity as the least evil of the two when the choice 
must be between it and Popery.' — Dr. Hengstenberg, of Berlin, on 
the other hand, had the courage to sa}^ to the Protestants of the 
rationalistic no-religion school, who were disposed to place religion 
in mere opposition and mere contradiction to the Catholic Church, 
'Get thee behind me, Satan;' and to proclaim to the world, that 
' there is no comparison to be thought of between Infidelity and 
Catholicism, and that when it comes to a war with the first, all our 
affections and sj-mpathies are bound to go joyfully with the last, as 
one grand division simply of the great army of faith, to which all 
true Protestants as well as all true Catholics belong.' 

"But what we have in view now, more particularly, is to expose 
the fallacy that lies in the extracts we have given from Dr. Bacon 
and Bishop Wilson, with regard to Early Christianity, as compared 
with that particular modern scheme of religion, which they dignify 
with the title of Evangelical, and which is for them the only true 
and perfect sense of the Gospel. Both writers assume, that there 
existed in the beginning, back of the corruptions and abuses of 
Romanism, and subsequently to the time of the Apostles, a certain 
golden age, longer or shorter, of comparatively pure religious faith, 
which truly represented still the simplicity and spiritualit}^ of the 
proper divine model of the Church, as we have it plainly exhibited 
in the New Testament; and that this was in all material respects of 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 345 

one character precisely with what they now approve as the best 
style of Protestantism. But never was there a more perfect mis- 
take. 

" It may be easy enough to show that there are many points of 
difference between Early Christianity and Romanism, as we find 
this established in later times. But this fact is by ho means Suffi- 
cient to show that the first was to the same extent in agreement 
with modern Protestantism, whether in the Episcopalian or in the 
Congregational form. It is clear on the contrary that no such 
agreement has ever had place, but that modern Protestantism is 
still farther away from this older faith than the system by which it 
is supposed to have been supplanted in the Middle Ages. No de- 
fence of Protestantism can well be more inefficient and unsound, 
than that by which it is set forth as a pure repristination simply 
of what Christianity was at the beginning, either in the fourth cen- 
tury, or the third, or the second. It is always found on examina- 
tion to have no such character in fact; and every attempt to force 
upon the world any imagination of the sort, in favor either of Epis- 
copy, or Presbyterianism, or Independency, must only serve in the 
end by its palpable falsehood to bring suspicion and doubt on the 
whole cause which is thus badly upheld. Whatever differences there 
may be between believers of the first ages and those that followed it, 
it is still plain enough that the course of things was from the Very 
start towards that order which afterwards prevailed (Grseco-Roman 
Christianity. — Ed.) ; that this later order therefore stands bound by 
true historical connection with what went before ; and that Protest- 
antism, accordingly, as a still more advanced period in the general 
movement of history, holds a living relation to the first period 
only through the medium of the second, and is just as little a copy 
of the one in form as it is in the other. 

" This we sincerely believe is the only ground on which may be 
set up any rational defence of the great revolution of the sixteenth 
century (apart from Scripture. — Ed.), in conjunction with a true 
faith in the Divine character of the Church. It is the theory of 
historical development, which assumes the possibility and necessity 
of a transition on the part of the Church through various stages of 
form, as in all growth, for the very purpose of bringing out more 
and more fully the true inward sense of this life, which has always 
been one and the same from the beginning. — The only escape there 
is in the formula of the same and yet not the same, legitimate 
growth, historical development. 

" It needs but little knowledge of history certainly, to see that 
22 



346 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

Christianit} 7 as it stood in the fourth century, and in the first part 
of the fifth, in the time of Jerome and Ambrose and Augustine, in 
the time of Chr} r sostorn, Basil and the Gregories was something 
very different from modern Protestantism, and that it bore in truth 
a very near resemblance in all material points to the later religion 
of the Roman Church. This is most clear of course as regards full 
Puritanism, in the form it carries in New England; but it is equally 
true in fact of the Anglican system also, and this whether we take 
it in the Low Church or the High Church view. Episcopalians are 
indeed fond of making a great distinction between the first four or 
five centuries and the ages that follow ; telling us that the Early 
Church thus far was comparatively pure ; that the Roman apostacy 
came in afterwards, marring and blotting the fair face which things 
had before; and that the English Church distinguished itself at the 
Reformation b} T its moderation and sound critical judgement, in 
discriminating here properly between the purity of the primitive 
faith and its subsequent adulterations. According to the most 
churchly view, the Reformation was for Anglicanism no revolution 
properly speaking at all, but the simple clearing away of some pre- 
vious abuses, and a self-righting of the English Church, as a whole, 
once more into its old habit and course. But this is altogether a 
most tame and desperate hypothesis. The boasted discrimination 
of the English Protestantism vanishes into thin air the moment we 
come to inquire into its actual origin and rise. Never was there 
a great movement, in which accident, caprice and mere human pas- 
sion more clearty prevailed as factors over the forces of calm judg- 
ment and sound reason. — The main feature of it is Episcopacy, with 
a King at the head of it instead of a Pope. In virtue of this con- 
stitution, and some few peculiarities besides, Anglicanism piques 
itself on being a jure divino succession of the old English branch 
of the Church Catholic, while for want of such accidents other 
Protestant bodies have no right to put in any similar claim. The 
charm lies in the notion of the Episcopate, handed down by out- 
ward succession, as a sort of primary, divinely appointed mark and 
seal of the True Church. 

"But what would such men as Cyprian, Ambrose, or Augustine, 
have thought of the glorification of the Episcopate, with all that 
rriay go along with it in the English sj^stem besides, in an} T such 
outward style? They indeed did put a high value on Episcopacy 
and some other things that Anglicanism contends for; but only as 
these interests were themselves comprehended in what they held to 
•be a still wider and deeper s} T stem of truth. — For in truth there is 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 341 

no return here to anything more than fragments of the early system, 
even in the dead view now mentioned. It is as pure a fiction as 
ever entered a good man's head, to dream as Bishop Wilson does, 
that this favorite scheme of Evangelical Episcopalianism prevailed 
in the fourth century, and the case is not materially improved by sim- 
ply changing the dream into an Oxford or Tractarian shape. The 
whole idea of a marked chasm anywhere about the fifth century, 
dividing an older, purer style of Christianity from the system that 
meets us in the Middle Ages, much as English Episcopacy stands 
related to the papacy, is no better than a chimera ; history is all 
against it; we might just as rationally pretend to find any such 
dividing in the eighth or in the tenth." — The Grseco-Roman Church, 
which was at first one, became in the course of time more Greek on 
the one side and more intensely Roman on the other; and the re- 
sult was the great schism between the East and the West. 

" But if anything in the world can be said to be historically clear, 
it is the fact that with the close of the fourth century and the 
coming in of the fifth, the primacy of the Roman See was admitted 
and acknowledged in all parts of the Christian world. The promise 
of the Saviour to Peter is always acknowledged by the fathers in 
the sense that he was to be the centre of unity for the Church, and, 
in the language of Chrysostom, to have the presidency of it through- 
out the whole earth. Ambrose and Augustine both recognized this 
of Peter over and over again, in the clearest and strongest terms. 
To be joined in communion with the See of Rome was in the view 
of this period to be in the bosom of the True Church : to be out of 
this communion was to be in schism. It was not (it was thought. — 
Ed.) to be in union with any other bishop or body of bishops; the 
sacrament of unity was held to be a force only as having regard to 
the Church in its universal character; and this involved necessarily 
the idea of one universal centre, which by general consent was to 
be found only in Rome, and no where else. — And the whole world 
apparently regarded the primacy, in the same way, as a matter fully 
settled and established in the constitution of the Christian Church. 
We hear of no objection to it, no protest against it, as a new and 
daring presumption, or as a departure from the earlier order of 
Christianity. 

" The idea of the primacy implies of course the Episcopacy, but 
it implies also a great deal more. At the ground of it lies also the 
conception of a truly Divine character, belonging to the Church as 
a whole, and not to be separated from the attributes of unity and 
universality ; the idea of the Church, thus as one, holy and Cath- 



348 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

olic ; the idea of an actual continuation of Christ's presence and 
power in the Church, according to the terms of the original apos- 
tolic commission; the idea of sacramental grace, the power of ab- 
solution, the working of miracles to the end of time ; and a real 
communion of saints extending to the departed dead, as well as to 
those still living on the earth. It is perfectly certain, accordingly, 
that in the fourth and fifth centuries all these and other naturally 
related conceptions, running very directly into the Roman corrup- 
tions as they are called of a later period, were in full operation and 
force; and this in no sporadic exceptional or accidental way merely, 
but with universal authority and as belonging to the inmost life 
and substance of the great mystery of Christianity. — In the bosom 
of this system stood, not outwardly and by accident only, as the 
true representative of its very soul and life, such men as Atha- 
nasius, Chiysostom, Basil the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory 
of Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, Ephraim the Syrian, Hilary 
of Poictiers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. They held the 
fundamentals certainly of the Gospel ; but they held them in con- 
nection with a vast deal that modern Protestantism is in the habit 
of denouncing as the worst Roman corruption, and what is most 
stumbling of all, thej^ made it a fundamental point to hold the sup- 
posed better parts of their faith just in this bad connection and no 
other. The piety of Ambrose and Augustine is steeped in what 
this modern school sets down as rank heathenish superstition. The 
slightest inspection of historical documents is sufficient to convince 
Siiiy unprejudiced mind of this fact. 

"The ground here then taken by Bishop Wilson, and by the 
whole Low Church or No-Church order, still bent on claiming some 
sort of genealogical affinity with the order and piety of the fourth 
and fifth centuries, is palpably false. But how is it with Puse} T ism 
or Anglicanism in the high view, pretending to find in this early 
period its own pattern of Episcopacy, as distinguished from what 
it conceives to be those latter innovations of the Papacy which it 
pompously condemns and rejects. Alas, the whole theorj- is as 
brittle as glass, and falls to pieces with the first tap of the critic's 
hammer. 

The general Puritan hypothesis of Early Christianity, in the first 
ages, majr be reduced to several propositions: 

(1) It goes on the supposition that it started in the beginning 
under the same form substantially both in doctrine and practice, 
which is now known and honored as Evangelical Protestantism 
without prelacy. The doctrine was orthodox as distinguished from 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 349 

all heresies that are at war with the doctrines of the Trinity, human 
depravity and the atonement. The principle of the Bible and pri- 
vate judgment lay at the bottom of the whole system. 

(2) This happy state of things, established under the authority 
of the Apostles, and in their time universally present in the churches, 
was unfortunately of only short duration. The Church started 
right in the beginning, but when it comes fully into view again in 
the third century, it is found to be strangely wrong, fairly on the 
tide in truth of the prelatical system with its whole sea of corrup- 
tions and abominations. Between these dates then there must be 
assumed to be an apostasy or fall, somewhat like that which turned 
our first parents out of paradise into the common world. When or 
how the doleful change took place, in the absence of all reliable his- 
torical evidence, can only be made out by conjecture ; and here 
naturally the theory is subject in different hands to some variations. 
The Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptistic constructions are 
not just the same. All, however, make the paradisiacal period of 
the Church very short. 

(3) The change thus early commenced was in truth in full oppo- 
sition to the original sense and design of Christianity, and involved 
in principle from the start the grand apostasy that afterwards be- 
came complete in the Church of Rome, and which is graphically 
foretold in those passages of the New Testament that speak of 
Antichrist, the Mystical Babylon, and the man of sin. — Thus Chris- 
tianity went out in a dismal eclipse, with only a few tapers, dimly 
burning here and there in valleys and corners, to keep up some 
faint remembrance of that glorious day-spring from on high with 
which it had visited the nations in the beginning. 

(4) The long night of this fearful captivity came to an end 
finalty, through the great mercy of God, by the event of the Ref- 
ormation ; which was brought to pass by the diligent study of the 
Bible, the original codex of Christianity, under the awakening and 
guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, and consisted simply in a re- 
suscitation of the life and doctrine of the primitive Church, which 
had long been buried beneath the corruptions of the great Roman 
apostasy. The Reformation, in this view, was not properly the 
historical product and continuation under another form of the life 
of the Church itself, or what was called the Church, as it stood 
before. It was a revolutionary rebellion rather against this as 
something totally false and wrong, by which it was violently set 
aside to make room for a new order of things altogether. — Here, 
finally, after so long a sleep, the fair image of original Christianity, 



350 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

as it once gladdened the assemblies of the faithful in the da}-s of 
Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenseus, and the blessed mart3 T rs of Iyons 
and Yienne, has come forth as it were from the catacombs, to put 
to shame that frightful mask which has for so many centuries de- 
ceived the world in its name and stead. 

Such, as Dr. Nevin conceived, was the Puritan theory .of the past 
history of the Church, and such the relation in which it imagines 
that Protestantism stands to Primitive Christianity. The theor}^ 
and the fane}*- he believed to be visionary, and when logically car- 
ried subversive to the best interests of Protestantism itself. The 
very prodigiousness of such an hypothesis, when properly consid- 
ered, ought to startle its holders themselves. Instead of being nat- 
ural and reasonable, it is as much against nature and reason as can 
well be conceived. Eveiy presumption is against it. Only look at 
the scheme in its own light. All previous histoiy looked to the 
coming of Christ, and prepared the way for it, as the grand central 
fact of religion and so of the world's life. At length it came, the 
Fact of all facts, full of grace and truth, heralded b}^ angels, sur- 
rounded with miracles, binding earth to heaven, and laying the 
foundations of a new creation of whose splendors and glories there 
should be no end. — The Gospel was rapidly published throughout 
the Roman world. The ascended Redeemer, at the right hand of 
God, made head over all things to the Church, gave proof of His 
exaltation and power by causing His Kingdom to spread and pre- 
vail, in the face of all opposition, whether Jewish or Pagan. The 
whole course of things seemed to show clearly that the powers of a 
higher world were at work in the glorious movement, and that it em- 
bodied in itself the will and counsel of heaven itself for the full ac- 
complishment of the end towards which it reached. But, according 
to the hypothesis now before us, the very opposite of this took place. 

" The eclipse came not at once in its full strength ; but still from 
the very start, it was the beginning of the total obscurit}' that fol- 
lowed, and looked to this steadily as its end. So in truth Satan in 
the end prevailed over Christ. The Church fell, not partially and 
transient^ only, but universally in its collective and corporate 
character, with an apostasy that was to reach through twelve hun- 
dred years. — But will any sober-minded man pretend to say that 
this, in itself considered, is not a strange and unnatural hypothesis, 
which it is exceeding^ hard to reconcile, either with the divine 
origin of the Church, or with its Divine mission, or with the Divine 
presence in it of Him, who is represented as having the govern- 
ment of the world on His shoulders for its defence and salvation ? 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 351 

"Even under the Old Testament, it was a standing article of 
faith, that the theocracy could not fail. But this perpetuity was 
itself the type only of that higher and better state, in which the 
Jewish theocracy was to become complete finally as the New Tes- 
tament Church. Nothing could well be more foreign from the old 
Messianic scheme than the imagination that the enlargement of 
Jacob by the coming of Shiloh, was to give place almost immedi- 
ately again to a long night of captivity and bondage ten times worse 
than that of Babylon, from which there was to be no escape for 
more than a thousand years. And just as little can any such yiew 
be reconciled with the plan of Christianity, as it meets us in the 
New Testament. — There are, it is true, predictions enough of trials, 
heresies, apostasies and corruptions ; but the idea is never for a 
moment allowed, that these should prevail in any such universal 
way as the theory before us pretends. On the contrary, the strong- 
est assurances are given that this should not be the case. 

"It is very certain, that only the most wilful and stubborn pre- 
judice can fail to see how utterly at war the Bible is with the notion 
of a quickly apostatizing and totally failing Church, in any view 
answerable to the strange Irypothesis, which we have now under 
consideration. No such notion accordingly ever entered the mind 
of the Primitive Church itself. That would have been counted 
downright infidelity. The promise to Peter and the Apostolic 
commission were never taken in but one sense ; and it became ac- 
cordingly, as we all know, an element of the primitive faith, an ar- 
ticle of the early creed, to believe in the being of the Holy, Catholic 
Church as an indestructible fact, a divine mystery that could never 
fail or pass away. 

" Christianity in the beginning was anything but a passive and 
inert system, which offered itself like wax to every impression from 
abroad. It had a most intense life of its own, a power to assimilate 
and reject in the sea of elements with which it was surrounded, and 
the force of self-conservation, over against all dissolving agencies, 
as never any system of thought or life before possessed. It is just 
this organific and all-subduing character that forms the grand argu- 
ment from history for its divine origin and heavenly truth. Nean- 
der has it continually in view. What subtle speculations were 
not tried in the first centuries on the part of Gnostics, Manicheans, 
Sabellians, and others to corrupt the truth; and yet how promptly 
and vigorously all these innovations were met and repelled. 

" But this is not all. The prodigiousness of the theory goes still 
farther. What authority was it that fixed the sacred canon, de- 



352 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

termining in the beginning what books were taken to be inspired, 
and what other books, not a few, were to be rejected as apocrj'phal 
or false? The work of settling the canon began in the second cen- 
tury, but was not fully completed before the fourth; and then it 
was by the tradition and authority of the Church simply that the 
work, regarded through all this time as one and the same, was 
brought thus to its final consummation. Is it not strange, that we 
should be under obligation to such a growing mystery of iniquity 
for so excellent and holy a gift, and that coming to us in this way 
we can still be sure that every line in it is inspired, so as to make 
it the only rule of .our faith ? 

" Nor does the wonder stop here. These ages of apostasy, as 
they are here considered, were at the same time, by general ac- 
knowledgment, ages of extraordinary faith and power. Miracles 
abounded. Charit}^ had no limits. Zeal stopped at no sacrifices, 
however hard or great. The blood of martyrs flowed in torrents. 
The heroism of confessors braved every danger. Bishops ruled at 
the peril of their lives. In the catalogue of Roman Popes, no less 
than thirty before the time of Constantine, that is, the whole list 
that far with only two or three exceptions, wear the crown of mar- 
tyrdom. Nor was this zeal outward only, the fanaticism of a name 
or sect. Along with it burned, as we have seen before, a glowing in- 
terest in the truth, an inextinguishable ardor in maintaining the 
faith once delivered to the saints. Heresies quailed before its pres- 
ence. Schisms withered under its blasting rebuke. Thus, in the 
midst of all opposition, it went forward from strength to strength, 
till in the beginning of the fourth century finally we behold it fairly 
seated on the throne of the Caesars. And this outward victory, as 
Neander will tell us, was only a faint symbol of the far more im- 
portant revolution it had already accomplished in the empire of 
human thought, the interior world of spirit. Here was brought to 
pass, in the same time, a true creation from the bosom of chaos, 
such as the world had never seen before, over which the morning 
stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. In foun- 
dation or principle, at least, old things, whether of philosoplry, or 
of art, or of morality and social life, had passed away, and, lo, all 
things had become new. 

" And then again when this mystery came fully out, followed as 
we all know by the deep night of the Middle Ages, there was no 
end to the moral wonders of which we now speak. True, the world 
Was dark, very dark and very wild ; and its corruptions were pow- 
erfully felt at times in the bosom of the Church ; but no one will 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 353 

pretend to make this barbarism her work, or lay it as a crime to 
her charge. She was the rock that beat back its proud waves. She 
was the power of order and law, the fountain of a new civilization, 
in the midst of a tumultuating chaos. Consider the entire evan- 
gelization of the new barbarous Europe under the papal system. 
Is it not a work fairly parallel, to say the least, with the conquest 
of the old Roman Empire in the first ages ? 

" The theory here considered is false. It rests on no historical 
bottom. The Scriptures are against it. All sound religious feeling 
is at war with it. Facts of every sort conspire to prove it untrue. 
It is a sheer hypothesis, a sort of a Protestant myth we may call 
it, got up to serve a purpose, and hardened by time and tradition 
now into the form of a sacred prejudice ; or rather, it is an arbi- 
trary construction, that seeks to turn into a myth and fable the 
true history of the Church. — In such a shape it may be possible 
still to believe in a Holy Catholic Church, which was from the 
start the football of Satan. But in the same way it is possible also 
to believe that the moon is made of green cheese. 

" The best and most sufficient defence against the Puritan the- 
ory," says Dr. Nevin, "is simply to be somewhat imbued with the 
general soul of the Primitive Church, as it looks forth upon us 
from the writings of Ignatius, Justin Martyr and Tertullian." 
Accordingly, in the remainder of his second article, he proceeds 
to show how the Christianity of the early ages differed from that 
represented by Dr. Bacon and Bishop Wilson. This difference has 
reference, more particularly, to outward form or manifestation. How 
far the two agreed in inward substance or essence he does not pre- 
sume to say. The difference in the latter case may be less than 
what might be supposed, as true Christianity is always the same 
under the most diversified forms. Dr. Nevin had his eye, as we 
have seen, upon a modern and somewhat exclusive theory, and his 
object in his articles on Early Christianity was to show that it was 
not in harmony with facts or the truth in the premises. He ac- 
cordingly proceeds to show that the conception of the Church, of 
the Ministry, the Holy Sacraments, the Rule of Faith, the Order 
of Doctrine and Miracles as held by the early Church fathers, was 
widely different from that which is maintained at the present day 
in the modern Puritan world. What these conceptions were, as he 
firmly believed, he sought to set forth and defend in his other 
writings, and it is not necessary to repeat them in this connection. 

In his third and last article on Early Christianity, Dr. Nevin 
went on, more particularly than he had done before, to bring into 



354 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

view the practical bearings and issues of the whole subject. The 
positions, he says, assumed were not theological. Thej r related to 
questions of outward fact, to be settled in such form by proper testi- 
mony. We may explain them as we please. But it is perfectly idle 
to dispute them, or to pretend to set them aside. We might just as 
well quarrel with the constitution of nature, or with the Copernican 
system. The fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries were not Puri- 
tan nor Protestant. The}? - stood in the bosom of the Catholic sys- 
tem, the very same system of thought that completed itself in the 
Roman or Papal Church, and they were all Roruanizers, much 
more so than any Protestant theologians have ever been from 
Hugo Grrotius clown to Dr. Kevin. The strong supposition of Dr. 
Newman is not a whit too strong for the actual character of the 
case. If Ambrose or Athanasius should visit the earth with their 
old habit of mind, neither of them would be able, at least not at 
first, to feel himself at home in any of our Protestant churches. 
Anglicans, Low Churchmen, Presb} T terians, Congregationalists, 
Methodists, Baptists, United Brethren, Quakers, and so on to the 
end of the chapter, would be tempted to exclude them from their 
communion, or take them in at best as mere novices and babes re- 
quiring to be taught again the first principles of the doctrine of 
Christ. Meekly submitting to such instruction, they would no 
doubt rejoice in the light, libert} T and freedom conferred on the 
Evangelical Church by Christ Himself; but in their turn, as they 
grew in grace and knowledge, with their old faith in one Holy 
Catholic Church, the}^ would sternly denounce our divisions as with 
the voice of Christ, and, if let alone, help us very materially in heal- 
ing them. — How then are the facts to be explained ? Every person 
must have a theory of some kind to reconcile apparent contradic- 
tions or incongruities, and the only question is, Which is the best 
or most in harmony with history and the Scriptures ? 

" Mr. Isaac Taylor in his able and learned work on ' Ancient 
Christianity ' has made a valuable contribution to the solution of 
the vexed question of church history here concerned. With much 
learning he has undoubtedly been successful in proving, that it is 
an entire mistake to imagine anything like the counterpart of 
Anglican Protestantism as having existed in the fourth century, 
and that, in very truth, what are usually considered the worst abuses 
of Romanism were already fully at work in this period; na} T , that 
in mairr respects, the form under which the}^ appeared was decidedly 
worse than that which they carried subsequently in the Middle 
Ages. This testimony, the result of a very full and laborious per- 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 355 

sonal examination of the writings of the early fathers themselves, 
is supported throughout with a weight of authorities and examples 
that a man must be very rash indeed to think of setting aside. The 
evidence is absolutely overwhelming, that the Nicene Church was 
in all essential points of one mind and character with the Papal 
Church of later times, and that where any difference is to be found, 
it was for the most part not in favor of the first, but rather against 
it, and in favor of this last. 

" So much for the Mcene Age, according to the judgment of this 
learned author. But he does not confine his view to this period. 
His knowledge of the laws of history could not permit him to doubt 
its organic unity with the life of the period that went before ; and 
his actual study of that earlier age has been of a kind to place this 
reasonable conclusion beyond all question. — He confirms in full, 
accordingly, the general statement we have already made in rela- 
tion to the Christianity of the second and third centuries. The 
fourth century was a true continuation of the ecclesiastical forms 
and views of the third; and this again grew, by natural and legiti- 
mate birth, out of the bosom of the second. As far back as our 
historical notices reach, we find no trace this side of the New Testa- 
ment of any church system at all answering to any Puritan scheme 
of the present time; no room or space, however small, in which to 
locate the hypothesis even of any such scheme; but very sufficient 
proof rather that the prevailing habit of thought looked all quite 
another way, and that in principle and tendency at least the infant 
church was carried from the very start towards the order of the 
third and fourth centuries, and through this, we may say, towards 
mediaeval Catholicism in which that older system finally became 
complete. — In those times there were some true Protestants, as 
Neander styles them; they were suppressed whenever they pro- 
tested or seemed to be likely to increase in number. The most 
eminent of these worthy opposers of the reigning superstitions was 
Jovinian, an Italian monk, in the fourth century, who taught his 
people that they could be just as acceptable Christians in the sight 
of God as those who passed their days in unsociable celibacy or 
severe mortifications and fastings. He had many followers, but he 
was condemned by the Church in the year 390 and then banished 
by the State. 

"The general truth is clear. Protestantism and Earhv Chris- 
tianity are not the same. Let it be observed, we speak not now 
of Early Christianity, as it may be supposed to have been in the 
age of the Apostles, but of its manifestation in the period following 



356 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

that age, as far back as our historical data reach on this side of the 
New Testament. We speak not of what it might have been before 
the destruction of Jerusalem, or for a short time afterwards, in the 
first century; but of what it is found to have been, as a fact of 
history, in the second as well as in the third and fourth centuries. 
Let it also be again observed that we speak now not of inward es- 
sence but of outward form. There may be a wide difference in the 
latter view, when a real sameness has place after all under the for- 
mer view. All we say is, that Protestantism outwardly considered 
does not agree, in its general constitution and form, with what we 
find Christianity to have been after the time of the New Testament, 
as far back as the middle of the second as well as in the fourth and 
third centuries. 

" We are sorry to find that Mr. Isaac Taj^lor, with all his learn- 
ing and good sense, is not able to clear himself of this false and 
untenable ground, in his controversj" with the Oxford theology. 
He sets out indeed with what might seem to be a very strong ac- 
knowledgment of the dependence of the Modern Church upon that 
of antiquit}^. But the onhv use he sees proper to make of ecclesi- 
astical history after all is such as is* made of the testimony of a 
common witness in a court of law. The voice of the Church is to 
him only as the voice of the profane world, the authority of the 
fathers of one and the same order with the authority of Tacitus or 
Pliny. Antiquity maj T help us to the knowledge of some facts, but 
nothing more; to sit in judgment on the facts, to make out their 
true value, to accept them as grains of gold or reject them as heaps 
of trash, is the high prerogative of modern reason, acting in the 
triple office of lawyer, juryman, and judge. The rule or standard 
of judgment is indeed professedly the Bible, God's infallible word ; 
but the tribunal for interpreting and applying it, the highest and 
last resort, therefore, in all cases of controversy and appeal, is al- 
ways the mind of the present age as distinguished from that of 
ever}- age that has gone before. Mr. Taylor's stand-point is com- 
pletely subjective. But that is not the right position for doing jus- 
tice to any histoiy ; and least of all, for doing justice to the his- 
tory of God's Church. For if the Church be what it professed to 
be at the start, and what it is acknowledged by the whole Christian 
world to be in the Creed, it is a supernatural constitution, and in 
such view it must have a supernatural history. A divine Church, 
with a purely human histoiy, is a contradiction in terms. In an} 7 
such view, however, it is something fairly monstrous to think of 
turning the whole process into the pla} T of simply human factors, 



Chap. XXXIJ early Christianity 35*7 

and then requiring it to bend everywhere to the measure of our 
modern judgment. But this is precisely what Mr. Isaac Ta}dor 
allows himself to do. With the Bible in his hands, he finds it a 
most easy and reasonable thing to rule out of court the universal 
voice of the Church, from the second century, if need be, to the 
sixteenth, whenever it refuses to chime in with his own mind. In 
this way he falls in fact into the theory and method of Puritan- 
ism, under the most perfectly arbitrary form. Protestantism in 
his hands ceases to be historical altogether, and stands forward in 
direct antagonism to the life of the earty Church. The relation 
between the two systems is made to be one of violent contradic- 
tion and opposition. To make good the modern cause, antiquity 
is presented to us under attributes that destroy its whole title to 
our confidence and respect. 

" Our brethren of the early Church," Mr. Taylor himself tells us, 
"challenge our respect as well as our affection; theirs was the fer- 
vor of a steady faith in things unseen and eternal ; theirs often a 
meek patience and humility, under the most grievous wrongs ; theirs 
the courage to maintain a good profession before the frowning face 
of philosophy, of secular tyranny, and of splendid superstition; 
theirs was. abstractness from the world and a painful self-denial; 
theirs the most arduous and costly labors of love; theirs a munifi- 
cence in charity, altogether without example ; theirs was a reverent 
and scrupulous care of the sacred writings; and this merit, if they 
had had no other, is of a superlative degree, and should entitle them 
to the veneration and grateful regard of the modern Church. How 
little do many readers of the Bible, now-a-days, think of what it 
cost the Christians of the second and third centuries, merely to 
rescue and hide the sacred treasure from the rage of the heathen?" 

" This is a beautiful and bright picture," as Dr. Nevin remarks. 
"But, alas, the historical analysis that follows turns it all into 
shame. Nothing can be more gloomy and oppressive to a truly 
Christian mind, than the light in which the fathers of these first 
centuries, together with the theology and piety of the Ancient 
Church generally, are made to show themselves beneath the pencil 
of this brilliant writer. False principles came in from the start, 
not affecting simply the surface of the new religion, but carrying 
the poison of death into its very heart. Gnosticism, though resist- 
ed and conquered on the outside of the Church, had a full triumph 
within, and out of it grew the ascetic S3^stem, false views of marriage, 
the glorification of virginity, monasticism, and all kindred views. 
The celibate corrupted the whole scheme of theology. Christianity 



358 AT MERCERSBURG ER0M 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

itself is opposed to the Oriental theosophy, proceeding on a differ- 
ent view of the world ; and it vanquished this enemy in fact. But 
only, we are told, to take it again into its own bosom. ' The Cath- 
olic Church,' we are informed by Mr. Taylor, ' opposed substantial 
truths to these baseless and malignant speculations ; and triumphed ; 
but alas, it fell in triumphing.' Gnosticism thus infused its own 
Antichristian soul into the entire system of the Nicene theology. 
Parallel with this doctrinal corruption ran a corresponding corrup- 
tion of the whole life of religion — practically considered. — But with 
such a view of the theology and life of the fourth century, Mr. Tay- 
lor finds it natural and easy to charge the system with the universal 
decay of morals, that marked the last stage of the old Roman civil- 
ization. All came by necessary derivation from the ' church prin- 
ciples ' of the third and fourth centuries. The cause, which Christ 
had founded for the salvation of the world, proved in the end like 
the breath of a Sirocco, sweeping it with an immeasurable curse. 

" This may suffice for our present purpose, which is not to dis- 
cuss directly the merits of our author's position, but simply to set 
them in contrast with the other side of his own picture of this 
same Ancient Christianity, in argument and proof of the perfectly 
unhistorical character of his general scheme. A man may say 
what he pleases about the glories of the Early Church, Christ's 
presence in it, and its victories over error and sin ; but if he couple 
with it the idea of such wholesale falsehood and corruption as is 
here laid to its charge, all this praise is made absolutely void. 
The two thoughts refuse to stand together. One necessarily ex- 
cludes the other. Common history will not endure any such gross 
contradiction. But still less can it be reconciled with any faith in 
the history of the Church, as a supernatural order. 

"We have spoken before of Thiersch's 'Lectures on Catholicism 
and Protestantism.' They abound in original and fresh thought, 
pervaded throughout with a tone of the most earnest piety, though 
not altogether free at times from the excesses of an erratic fancy. 
The Church, he thinks, has passed through four great metamorphoses 
already, in coming to its present condition. First we have it under 
its Old Catholic form, as it existed between the age of the Apostles 
and the time of Constantine. Then it appears as the Imperial 
(Grseco-Roman) Church in close connection with the State, and 
undergoing many changes and corruptions. Next it becomes the 
Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. Last of all it stands 
before us as the Protestant Church. This was called forth, with a 
sort of inward necessity, by the corruption and abuses of the 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 359 

Roman system ; and it has its full justification in the actual relig- 
ious benefits it has conferred upon the world ; benefits that may 
be said to show themselves even in the improved character of 
Romanism itself. Still it is but too plain, that Protestantism is 
not the full successful solution of the problem of Christianity. It 
has not fulfilled the promise of its own beginning; and it carries in 
it no pledge now of any true religious millenium in time to come. 
Evils of tremendous character are lodged within its bosom. A 
reign of rationalism and unbelief has sprung out of it, for which 
the present course of things, in the view of Thiersch, offers no 
prospect of recovery or help. — The history of the Church is with 
him a grand and complicated process. Exposed to powerful cor- 
ruptions, and yet moving onward always towards the full consum- 
mation of its own original sense ; which, however, is not to be 
reached without the intervention of a new supernatural apostolate, 
in all respects parallel with that which was employed for the first 
establishment of Christianity in the beginning. — The self-sufficiency 
of both Protestant and Roman Catholic systems must come to an 
end, before room can be made for that higher state of the Church, 
which God may be expected then to bring in by a miraculous dis- 
pensation, restoring all things to their proper form." 

Dr. Nevin was free to acknowledge the force of Thiersch's words, 
but he believed too firmly in history and its laws to give much heed 
to the "fancy" of the amiable professor at the old Reformed Uni- 
versity at Marburg with his Irvingite tendencies. He accordingly 
pays more attention to a theory of the Church, maintained by Pro- 
fessor Rothe of Heidelberg University. His speculative construc- 
tion of Christian^ in its relation to nature and humanity were 
brought out, more fully and with unparalleled architectonic power, 
in his Theological Ethics. The conclusion arrived at by this gigantic 
thinker was that the Church is destined to be absorbed by the State, 
and as such is destined to pass away. This is a simple solution of 
the great problem, upheld with much ability also in his " Anfsenge 
der Christlichen Kirche;" but it shocked the Evangelical con- 
sciousness of orthodox Germany; and is referred to, with high re- 
gard for the author, by Dr. Nevin as an honest effort on the part 
of a great philosopher and theologian to throw light on the great 
question of the day. 

" Rothe's error, we think, lies in the assumption that the economy 
of the world, naturally considered, must be regarded as carrying in 
itself all the necessary elements and conditions of a perfect human- 
ity. A scientific apprehension of what the world is, as an historical 



360 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

process, or cosmos, would seem indeed to require that it should not 
be defeated in its highest end, the glorification of humanity, by the 
disorder of sin — that with reference to this it should not turn out 
a hopeless failure, an irrecoverable wreck, from which man must be 
extricated by an act of sheer power for the accomplishment of his 
salvation somewhere else. But we have no right to assume in this 
way, that the proper sense of the world in its natural order lies 
wholly in itself as an independent and separate system. The over- 
shadowing embrace of a higher econonrv^ — the absolutely supernat- 
ural — we must believe rather to have been needed from the first 
to complete its process in the life of man. In such view, redemption 
is more than the carrying out of the natural order of the world to 
any merely natural end; and the Church, as the mediator of its 
work, is more than a provisionary institute simply for perfecting 
the scheme of the State, the highest form of man's life on the basis 
of nature as it now stands. The true destination of this lies be- 
yond the present economy of nature in the sphere of the supernat- 
ural, in an order of things that fairly outleaps and transcends the 
whole S} T stem out of which grows the constitution of political king- 
doms and States. In the kingdom of heaven, the last and most 
perfect form of humanity, as 'they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage,' so also there will be neither Greek nor Jew ; but the 
whole idea of nationality is to be taken up, as it would appear, into 
a far higher and wider conception, rooted not in nature but in 
grace. The Church will not lose itself in the State; it will be the 
State rather that shall be found then to have vanished in the 
Church. — The whole theoiy, with all our respect for Rothe, we of 
course repudiate as unsound and false. How could the Church be 
an object of faith, that is, a supernatural mystery of like order with 
the other articles of the Creed, if it were after all any such pro- 
visional and transitory fact, designed to pass awa} T finally in another 
conception altogether? We might just as well resolve the resur- 
rection of the body, with Hymeneus and Philetus, into the idea of 
a new moral life begun in the present life. It will not do to defend 
Protestantism by surrendering Christianity. We are not willing 
to give up for it either histoiy or the Creed. 

" If Protestantism then is to be defended successfully (theoret- 
ically of course. — Ed.), it can be neither on the ground that it is a 
repristination simply of early post-apostolical Christianity, nor on 
the ground that it is an absolute nullification of this ancient faith, 
leaping over it with a single bound to the age of the Apostles. 

"We are thus shut up to the idea of historical development, as 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 361 

the only possible way of escape from the difficulty with which we 
are met in bringing the present here into comparison with the past. 
If the Modern Church must be the same in substance or being with 
the Ancient Church, a true continuation of its life as this has been 
in the world by divine promise from the beginning, while it is per- 
fectly plain, at the same time, that a wide difference holds between 
the two systems as to form, the relation binding them together can 
only be one of living progress or growth. No other will satisfy 
these outward conditions. Growth implies unity in the midst of 
change. That precisely is what we are to understand by historical 
development. 

" Some pretend to identify this doctrine of development with the 
system of Romanism itself, as though the only occasion for it were 
found in the variations through which it is supposed to have passed 
in reaching its present form. Mr. Newman, it is well known, has 
tried to turn the idea to account, in this way, in his memorable 
'Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.' The author 
holds Christianity to be an objective fact in the world, that must 
be throughout identical with itself. Still that it has undergone 
serious modifications in its outward form and aspect, he considers 
to be no less certain and clear. To reconcile this semblance of 
discrepancy then, he has recourse to what he calls the theory of 
developments. The whole theorj^, however, has been condemned 
by other Romanists, as being at war with the true genius of the 
Catholic religion. Mr. Brownson set himself in opposition to it 
from the start. Catholicism, as he will have it, has known no 
change. It is only Protestantism, that needs any ' such law of de- 
velopment ' to account for its changes ; and to Protestantism 
alone, accordingly, the whole theory legitimately and of right 
belongs. 

"Be this as it may, Protestantism, at all events, is still less able 
to get along without the help of some such theory than Romanism. 
This is now felt by all, who deserve to be considered of any au- 
thority in the sphere of Church History. The whole progress of this 
science at the present time, under the new impulse which has been 
given to it by Xeander and others, is making it more and more 
ridiculous to think of upholding the Reformation under any other, 
view. 

"Those who wish to see this subject ably and happily handled 
are referred to Professor Schaff's Principle of Protestantism, the 
special object of which is to exhibit and defend the idea of histor- 
ical development in its application to the Protestant movement. — 
23 



362 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

Dr. Schaff had entered too far into the modern sense of history 
and of the proper idea of the Church, to be satisfied with any such 
poor and superficial habit of thought. He saw the absolute neces- 
sity of showing Protestantism to be historical, in the full modern 
force of this most significant term, for the purpose of vindicating 
its right to exist ; and his work accordingly is a most honorable 
and vigorous attempt to defend it on this ground. We have said 
before, what we now deliberately repeat, that it is the best apology 
for the cause of the Reformation which has yet appeared in this 
country. However it may be as it regards details, the argument 
in its main course and scheme may be considered identical now 
with the very life of Protestantism. It is approved and endorsed 
in such view, we may saj", by the whole weight of German theolog- 
ical science, as it appears in its best representatives at the present 
time. 

" Protestantism in this treatise is no repudiation of Ancient Chris- 
tianity, nor of the proper religious life of the Middle Ages. It 
owes its being to the old life, which was engaged for centuries be- 
fore with its painful parturition. Here is the idea of historical 
development. But the theory goes farther. Protestantism, the 
favorite child of Catholicism, is not itself the full realization of 
the true idea of Christianity. As it was not the first form of 
Christianity, so neither may it be considered the last. It is itself 
a process of transition only towards a higher and better state of 
the Church which is still future though probably now near at hand, 
and the coming in of which may be expected to form an epoch in 
histon T quite as great at least as that of the Reformation itself. 
The result of this new development will be the recoveiy of Prot- 
estantism itself from the evils under which it now suffers, and in 
this way its full and final vindication ~bj the judgment of history. 
It will, however, at the same time, be a vindication of Catholicism, 
also, as having been of true historical necessity in its da} T for the 
full working out of the problem, which shall thus at last be con- 
ducted to its own glorious solution. Such, we say, is the theor}^ 
of historical development, as we have it applied in this interesting 
and able Tract to the great question here brought into view ; the 
question, namely, how Protestantism is to be set in harmony with 
the past history of the Church, and with its true ideal as the King- 
dom of God, a supernatural polity of truth and righteousness 
among men. 

" The German idea of development, as we may call it, is not the 
same with that presented to us b}- Dr. Xewman, in which every- 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 363 

thing moves in the line of Catholicism only, without the possibility 
of growing into anything like Protestantism. The former theory, 
however, does so, in the most emphatic manner. Its idea of growth 
is that of a process carried forward, by the action of different 
forces, working separately to some extent, and so it may be even 
one-sidedly and contradictorily for a time, towards a concrete re- 
sult, representing in full unity at last the true meaning and power 
of the whole. Each part of the entire process then is regarded as 
necessary and right in its own order and time ; but still only as 
relatively right, and as having need thus to complete itself by pass- 
ing ultimately into a higher form. Catholicism in this view is justi- 
fied as a true and legitimate movement of the Church; but it is 
taken to have been the explication of one side of Christianity 
mainly, rather than a full and proper representation of the fact as 
a whole ; a process thus that naturally became excessive, and so 
wrong in its own direction, preparing the way for a powerful re- 
action finally in the wrong direction. 

This reaction we have in Protestantism; which in such view 
springs from the old Church, not just \>y a uniform process, but 
with a certain measure of violence, while }^et it is found to be 
the product, really and trubv, of its deeper life. Here again, 
however, as before, the first result is only relatively good. The 
new tendency has become itself one-sided, exorbitant, and full of 
wrong. Hence the need of still another crisis, the signs of whose 
advent many seem already to see, which may arrest and correct 
this abuse, and open the way for a higher and better state of the 
Church, in which both of these tendencies shall be brought at 
length happily to unite, revealing to the world the full sense of 
Christianity in a form now absolute and complete. — Such is the 
course of history. Throughout it is made up of antagonisms, which 
become intense in proportion to the truth they embody. When 
their vitality is exhausted, neither can be said to have gained an ab- 
solute victory. Afterwards they live in peace in some higher life. 

" For a truly learned representation of this whole view, in its re- 
lations to other older schemes of ecclesiastical histon^, for there 
has been a remarkable exemplification of the law of development in 
the progress of this science itself, we beg leave to refer our readers 
to Professor Schaff's tract entitled, What is Church History t They 
will find it well worthy of their most careful and diligent perusal." 

Dr. Nevin concluded his three articles on Early Christianit}', 
covering 133 pages of the Bevieiv, with sundry practical lessons^ 
expressed or implied, in what, with much argumentative power tJ 



364 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

he had already written. "Protestantism, as it now stands, was 
not intended to be a permanently abiding order of things, but to 
prepare the way for a far more perfect state of the Church, in which 
its present disorders and misery shall finally be brought to an end. 
But this new order in which it is to become complete cannot be 
reached without the co-operation of the Roman Catholic Church. 
However faulty this may be in its separate character, it still em- 
bodies in itself nevertheless certain principles and forms of life, 
derived from the past history of the Church, which are wanting in 
Protestantism as it now stands, and which need to be incorpo- 
rated with it in some wa} r as the proper and necessary complements 
of its own nature. The interest of Romanism is not to be so left 
behind as to be no longer of any account ; and it must therefore 
come in hereafter in some way to counterbalance and correct again 
the disorder and excess of the other system." 

It may be supposed that the principal succession of the proper 
life of the Church lies in the Roman Catholic communion ; or it 
may be taken for granted that Protestantism is to become the 
grand reigning stream of Christianity, although not by any means 
the whole of it, into which finally the life of Catholicism is to 
pour itself as a wholesome qualifying power, yielding to it the 
palm of superior right and strength ; but neither the one nor the 
other of these alternatives must necessarily be the answer to the 
question, What think ye of Christ and His Church? Dr. Nevin 
proposed a third and intermediate view which he regarded as most 
consonant with Scripture, the Creed, and a rational view of history. 
"The two forces, Protestantism and Romanism," he says, "may 
be viewed as contrary sides merely of a dialectic process, in the 
Hegelian sense, which must be both alike taken up and so brought 
to an end (aufgehoben) in a new form of existence, that shall be at 
once the truth of both, and yet be something higher and better 
than either." 

He believed that the Church was a supernatural constitution and 
had a supernatural history in the world. It had of course a human 
side, in which frailty and folly have exhibited themselves in all 
ages, often apparently the play of a diabolical agency; but it had 
a divine or supernatural side also, bearing in its bosom the presence 
of its own glorified Head. This manifests itself also from age to age, 
and often in the darkest periods. Its history must, therefore, be 
viewed as a growth or organic process throughout. The evidence 
of such a presence is specially manifest at particular epochs, but the 
theory requires that it must be recognized all along the line of his- 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 365 

tory. To establish this fact it became necessary for Dr. Nevin to 
oppose current theories, and in their place to show that there was a 
progressive development of the divine-human life of the Church 
from the time of the Apostles down through the ages. This requir- 
ed of him to make concessions to the Roman Catholics, which few 
Protestant writers were willing to admit. He did this freely in his 
articles on Early Christianity, and it subjected him largely to sus- 
picion, abuse and misrepresentations from ultra-protestant writers. 

As soon, however, as he had finished one set of essays, he resumed 
the same subject and prepared four lengthy articles on Cyprian, 
the celebrated African church father who lived in the third century. 
They constitute an admirable monograph in which the life, the 
work, and the writings of this distinguished bishop, who was 
honored with the crown of martyrdom, A. D. 258, are portraj^ed 
with much force and rare skill. Among his works that have come 
down to the present time, Dr. Nevin pays particular attention to 
his treatise Be Unitate Ecclesiae, in which, he maintains, may be 
seen the faith of the ancients in regard to the true nature of the 
Church. As the articles on Cyprian had the same general object 
in view as those on Early Christianity, it will not be necessary for 
us here to speak of them in detail. Both sought to controvert- 
false theories of Church History and to point out the path to the 
solution of the Church Question on rational and scriptural grounds. 
We will here give only a few extracts, which will tend to illustrate 
Cyprian's views of Christianity and the Church, as understood by 
Dr. Nevin, after a thorough and careful study of all his works. 

"Religion with Cyprian," says his reviewer, "was no form 
merely, no empty theory or notion, but a living power which pos- 
sessed and ruled the entire man. — The idea of any opposition be- 
tween the Gospel and the Church lay as far as possible from his 
mind. He could have no patience with any spirituality, which 
might have plumed itself on being indifferent to this side of the 
nrystery of godliness, under the dream of moving in a higher and 
more ethereal region. All such spirituality he would have de- 
nounced at once, beyond every sort of doubt, as false spiritualism 
only, Gnostic hallucination, the action of the simply natural mind 
in the way of religion, substituted for the operation of grace under 
its proper supernatural form. To be in the Spirit was not in his 
view any exaltation merely of the natural mind as such ; that 
would be after all something born only of the flesh, which can 
never, by any stimulation, we are told, produce any thing higher 
than itself; it implied with him the presence and action of the 



366 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

Hol} T Ghost in the world under a real form, which was taken to be 
above nature, and which was felt to involve thus necessarily the 
idea of an actual constitution, in the bosom of which only, as dis- 
tinguished from the world in its common form, it could be possible 
to have part in the grace it was supposed to comprehend. 

"This constitution presented itself to his mind as an object of 
faith, according to the Creed, in the mystery of the Holy Catholic 
Church. There, accordingly, and not in the sphere of our natural 
life on the outside of this Divine constitution, the Spirit was regard- 
ed as dwelling and working in a most real objective wa} T , for the 
sanctification and salvation of sinful men. All true spirituality then , 
in the view of Cyprian, was conditioned b} T the believing acknowl- 
edgment of this mystery, and an actual submission to the power 
of it in its own place, and under its proper form. He made vast 
account certainly of the outward Church, of the regular priest- 
hood, of the hory Sacraments, of ecclesiastical institutions, and 
forms generally; but just because he made all in all of the action 
of the Spirit, and believed at the same time that such supernatural 
grace was not to be found in the order of nature, but offered itself 
for the use of men only in the Church, and so through the forms 
and ministrations of the Church — that it was a mystery in such 
view, which men are bound to take bj T faith, and the whole sense of 
which is lost the moment the} T pretend to deal with it as an object 
of mere natural sense and reason. 

"We have seen already, to some extent, how Cyprian's doctrine 
of the Church gave character and form to his theological system at 
other points. Along with the idea of a Divine polity, as truly 
present in the world as the Jewish theocracy by which it was fore- 
shadowed, went in his mind also the conception of a ministry exer- 
cising really Divine functions, of a proper priesthood, of sacra- 
ments powerful to take away sin and forward the soul in the way 
of everlasting life. Baptism, confirmation, the mystical presence 
in the holy eucharist, the awful sacrifice of the altar, penance in- 
cluding confession and absolution, the sacrament of orders, conse- 
crations and holy rites generally, derived for him their significance 
and force from this article of the Holy Catholic Church. Here 
011I3' the Bible could have its right authority and proper use. Here 
only airy virtue could have any true Christian merit. 

" Cyprian's sj^stem of religion, which was at the same time that 
of his age, we have found to be mainly Catholic and not Protest- 
ant. All is conditioned b} r the old Catholic theory of the Church : 
all flows, from first to last, in the channel of the Creed. The whole 



Chap. XXXI] early Christianity 367 

is in such view in perfect harmoiry with itself. There is nothing 
broken or fragmentary in the scheme ; and no unprejudiced mind 
can fail to see, that it is in all material points, in its fundamental 
principles and leading elements, the same s}7-stem that is presented 
to us in the Nicene period, and that it is brought out more fully 
afterwards in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. This then is 
the same result precisely that was reached in our articles on Early, 
Christianity, only under a somewhat different view. 

"No sophistry can ever make Protestant Christianity to be the 
same thing with the Christianity of the Early Church. Episcopalian- 
ism here too, with all its pretensions and self-conceit, has just as 
little real historical bottom to stand upon as the cause of the Refor- 
mation under a different form. No part of the interest can ever be 
successfully vindicated, as being a repristination simply of what 
Christianity was in the beginning ; and it is only a waste of strength, 
and a betrayal indeed of the whole cause, to pretend to make good 
its assumptions and claims in any such violent way. Sooner or 
later history must revenge itself for the wrong it is thus made to 
bear. — We must therefore resort to the theory of historical devel- 
opment, by which the Catholic form of the Church shall be re- 
garded as the natural and legitimate cause of its history onward to 
the time of the Reformation, and the state of things be taken as a 
more advanced stage of that same previous life, struggling forward 
to a still higher and far more glorious consummation in time to 
come." 

The theory of historical development, frequently referred to 
in this discussion, may of course be carried out in various ways. 
The methods of Newman, Rothe, Neander, Schaff and Thiersch, are 
not in all respects the same, and it may be presumed that Dr. Nevin's 
view of development may not have been, in all respects, precisely 
the same as any one of those of the distinguished theologians just 
named. But who now that has any faith in history can doubt that 
Christianity has developed itself in past ages as an organic or 
genetic growth? In this respect it obeys the laws of history in 
general, but differs from all the other historical processes in the 
fact that it embodies in it a divine element that never dies, inde- 
structible and self-perpetuating. Systems of natural religion may 
persist for ages, but their vitality declines and they have no power 
to arrest the progress of decay. Christianity, on the other hand, 
has in it a recuperative energy — a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life, as Christ Himself says — and therefore, when it seems 
to be wearing out under one form, it rejuvenates itself under 



368 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

another. — With the four extended articles on Cyprian, Dr. Nevin 
practically closed the discussion of the Church Question, histor- 
ically considered. He admitted its difficulty, and invited others, 
especially such as may not have assented to his conclusions, to give 
the subject their attention, and contribute their share, as he had 
done, to the solution of the problem with which he had wrestled. 
The Catholicism of past centuries was to him no more satisfactory 
than the divided state of Protestantism, and he looked to the future 
when God in His own wa}' would heal the divisions of Zion. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

IN the articles thus far considered, it will be perceived that Dr. 
Nevin's mind was much occupied with the idea of the Church 
as truly Catholic. Nowhere could he see it realized in the Chris- 
tianity of his times, neither in the Anglican nor in the Roman 
Church, where most account is made of the title. The very name 
of the Roman Catholic Church proves that it is limited to one or- 
der of civilization, and that it can be said to be Catholic only in a 
limited, and one-sided sense. It therefore seemed to be incumbent 
on him to define more clearly what was truly Catholic, and to show 
in what it consists. This he proceeded to do in the January num- 
ber of the Mercer sburg Review for the year 1851, in an admirable 
article on Catholicity, which is here presented to the reader with- 
out any abbreviation. 

Among the attributes which Christianity has claimed to it- 
self from the beginning, there is none perhaps more interesting 
and significant than that which is expressed by the title Catholic. 
It is not the product in any way of mere accident or caprice; 
just as little as the idea of the Church itself may be taken to 
have any origin of this sort. It has its necessity in the very 
conception of Christianity and the Church. Hence it is that we 
find it entering into the earliest Christian confession, the Apos- 
tles' Creed, as an essential element of the faith that springs from 
Christ. As the mystery of the Church itself is no object of mere 
speculation, and rests not in any outward sense or testimony only, 
but must be received as an article of faith which proceeds with in- 
ward necessity from the higher mystery of the Incarnation, so also 
the grand distinguishing attributes of the Church, as we have them 
in the Creed, carry with them the same kind of inward necessary 
force for the mind in which this Creed truly prevails. They are 
not brought from abroad, but spring directly from the constitution 
of the fact itself with which faith is here placed in communication. 
The idea of the Church as a real object for faith, and not a fantastic 
notion only for the imagination, involves the character of Cath- 
olicity, as well as that of truth and holiness, as something which 
belongs inseparably to its very nature. To have true faith in the 
Church at all, we must receive it as One, Holy, Apostolical, and 
Catholic. To let go any of these attributes in our thought, is neces- 

(369) 



310 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

sarily to give up at the same time the beiug of the Church itself as 
an article of faith, and to substitute for it a mere chimera of our 
own brain under its sacred name. Hence the tenacity with which 
the Church has ever held fast to this title of Catholic, as her in- 
alienable distinction over against all mere parties or sects bearing 
the Christian name. Had the title been only of accidental or artifi- 
cial origin, no such stress would have been laid on it, and no such 
force would have been felt always to go along with its application. 
It has had its reason and authority all along, not so much in what 
it may have been made to mean exactly for the understanding in 
the way of formal definition and reflection, as in the living sense 
rather of Christianity itself, the consciousness of faith here as that 
which goes before all reflection and furnishes the contents with 
which it is to be exercised. 

The term Catholic, it is generally understood, is of the same sense 
immediately with universal; and so we find some who are jealous 
of the first, as carrying to their ears a popish sound, affecting to 
use this last rather in the Creed. The} T feel it easier to say: "I 
believe in a holy, universal or general Church," than to adopt out 
and out the old form: "I believe in the Holy Catholic, or in one 
Holy Catholic Church." In this case, however, it needs to be 
borne in mind that there are two kinds of generality or universality^ 
and that only one of them answers to the true force of the term 
Catholic ; so that there is some danger of bringing in by such change 
of terms an actual change of sense also, that shall go in the end to 
overthrow the proper import of the attribute altogether. 

The two kinds of universality to which we refer are presented to 
us in the words all and whole. These are often taken to be sub- 
stantially of one and the same meaning. In truth, however, their 
sense is very different. The first is an abstraction, derived from 
the contemplation or thought of a certain number of separate indi- 
vidual existences, which are brought together in the mind and clas- 
sified collectively hy the notion of their common properties. In 
such view, the general is of course something secondary to the in- 
dividual existences from which it is abstracted, and it can never be 
more broad or comprehensive than these are in their numerical and 
empirical aggregation. It is ever accordingly a limited and finite 
generality. Thus we speak of all the trees in a forest, all the stars, 
all men, &c, meaning properly in each case the actual number of 
trees, stars, or men, individually embraced at the same time in our 
general view, neither more nor less, a totality which exists only lry the 
mind and is strictly dependent on the objects considered in their 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 371 

individual character. We reach the conception by a process of in- 
duction, starting with single things, and by comparison and ab- 
straction rising to what is general ; while yet in the very nature of 
the case the generality can never transcend the true bounds of the 
empirical process out of which it grows and on which it rests. But 
widely different now from all this, is the conception legitimately 
expressed b} r the word whole. The generality it denotes is not ab- 
stract, a mere notion added to things outwardly by the mind, but 
concrete; it is wrought into the very nature of the things them- 
selves, and they grow forth from it as the necessary and perpetual 
ground of their own being and life. In this way, it does not depend 
on individual and single existences as their product or consequence ; 
although indeed it can have no place in the living world without 
them ; but in the order of actual being the}^ must be taken rather 
to depend on it, and to subsist in it and from it as their proper 
original. Such a generality is not finite, but infinite, that is, with- 
out empirical limits and bounds; it is not the creature of mere ex- 
perience, and so is not held to its particular measure however large, 
but in the form of idea is always more than the simple aggregate of 
things \)y which it is revealed at any given time in the world of 
sense. The all expresses a mechanical unity, which is made up of 
the parts that belong to it, by their being brought together in a 
purely outward way ; the whole signifies on the contrary an organic 
unity, where the parts as such have no separate and independent 
existence, but draw their being from the universal unity itself in 
which they are comprehended, while they serve at the same time to 
bring it into view. The whole man for instance is not simply all 
the elements and powers that enter empirically into his constitution, 
but this living constitution itself rather as something more general 
than all such elements and powers, in virtue of which only they 
come to be thus what they are in fact. In the same way the whole 
of nature is by no means of one sense simply with the numerical 
aggregate, the actual all, of the objects and things that go to make 
up what we call the sj^stem of nature at an^y given time ; and hu- 
manity or the human race as a whole may never be taken as identi- 
cal with all men, whether this be understood of all the men of the 
present generation only or be so extended as to include all gener- 
ations in the like outward view. Even where the thing in view 
may appear by its nature to exclude the general distinction here 
made, it will be found on close consideration that where the terms 
before us are used at all appropriately they never have just the 
same sense, but that the whole of a thing implies always of right 



372 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

something more than is expressed merely b} T its all. The whole 
house is not of one signification with all the house, the whole watch 
with all its parts, or the whole library with all the certain books 
that are found upon its shelves. Two different ways of looking at 
the object, whatever it may be, are indicated by the two terms, and 
also two materially different conceptions, the force of which it is 
not difficult to feel even where there may be no power to make it 
clear for thought. 

And now if it be asked, which of these two orders of universality 
is intended by the title Catholic, as applied to the Christian Church, 
the answer is at once sufficiently plain. It is that which is ex- 
pressed by the word whole (a term that comes indeed etymologi- 
cally from the same root), and not that whose meaning lies more 
fithv in the word all. A man may say: "I believe in a holy, uni- 
versal Church;" when his meaning comes merely to this at last, 
that he puts all single Christians together in his own mind, and is 
willing then to acknowledge them under this collective title. The 
universality thus reached, however, is only an abstraction, and as 
such falls short altogether of the living concrete nrvstery which is 
set before us as an object, not of reflection simply, but of divine 
supernatural faith, in the old oecumenical sjmibols. The true uni- 
versality of Christ's kingdom is organic and concrete. It has a 
real historical existence in the world in and through the parts of 
which it is composed; while jet it is not in an} T way the sum simply 
or result of these, as though they could have a separate existence 
beyond and before such general fact; but rather it most be regarded 
as going before them in the order of actual being, as underlying 
them at every point, and as comprehending them always in its 
more ample range. It is the whole, in virtue of which only the 
parts entering into its constitution can have any real subsistence 
as parts, whether taken collectively or single. Such undoubtedly 
is the sense of the ancient formula, "I believe in the Holy Catholic 
Church," as it meets us in the faith of the early Christian world. 

But the idea of wholeness is variously determined of course by 
the nature of the object to which it ma} T be applied. We can speak 
of a whole forest, a whole continent, or a whole planet; of a whole 
species of animals, or of animated nature as a whole; of a whole 
man, a whole nation, a whole generation, or a whole human world. 
What now is the whole, in reference to which the attribute of the 
Church here under consideration is affirmed, as a necessary article 
of Christian faith? 

The only proper answer to this question is, that the attribute 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity p 373 

refers to the idea of universal humanity, or of this world as a whole. 
When Christianity is declared to be Catholic, the declaration must 
be taken in its full sense to affirm, that the last idea of this world, 
as brought to its completion in man, is made perfectly possible in 
the form of Christianity, and in this form alone, and that this 
power therefore can never cease to work until it shall have actually 
taken possession of the world as a whole, and shall thus stand 
openly and clearly revealed as the true consummation of its nature 
and history in every other view. 

The universalness here affirmed must be taken to extend in the 
end, of course, over the limits of man's nature abstractly considered, 
to the physical constitution of the surrounding world, according to 
Rom. viii, 19-23, 2 Peter iii, 13, and many other passages in the 
Bible; for the physical and moral are so bound together as a single 
whole in the organization of man's life, that the true and full re- 
demption of this last would seem of itself to require a real palin- 
genesia or renovation also of the earth in its natural form. The 
proper wholeness even of nature itself, ideally considered, lies ulti- 
mately in the power of Christianity, and can be brought to pass or 
made actual only by its means. But it is more immediately and 
directly with the world of humanity as such that this power is con- 
cerned, and such reference is to be acknowledged too, no doubt, as 
mainly predominant in the ecclesiastical use of the title which we 
have now in hand. Christianity is Catholic, and claims to be so 
received by an act of faith, inasmuch as it forms the true and proper 
wholeness of mankind, the round and full symmetrical cosmos of 
humanity, within which only its individual manifestations can ever 
become complete, and on the outside of which there is no room to 
think of man's life except as a failure. 

There are two ways of looking at the human world, under the 
conception of its totality. The view may regard simply the area 
of the world's life outwardly considered, humanity in its numerical 
extent, as made up of a certain number of nations, tribes and indi- 
vidual men; or it may be directed more particularly to the world's 
life inwardly considered, humanity in its intensive character, the 
being of man as a living fact or constitution made up of certain 
elements, laws, forces and relations, which enter necessarily into its 
conception aside, from the particular millions of living men as such, 
by which it may be represented at any given time. These two 
conceptions are plainly different; while it is equally plain at the 
same time that neither of them may be allowed with any propriety 
to exclude the other, but that the true and real wholeness of hu- 



374 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

inanity is to "be found only in the union of both. Christianity or 
the Kingdom of God is Catholic, as it carries in itself the power to 
take possession of the world both extensivel}' and intensively, and 
can never rest short of this end. It is formed for such two-fold 
victory over the reign of sin, and has a mission from heaven ac- 
cordingly to conquer the universe of man's life in this whole and 
entire wa}-. 

Here precisely lies the missionary nature and character of the 
Church. It has a call to possess the world, and it is urged con- 
tinual^ b} T its own constitution to fulfill this call. The spirit of 
missions, wherever it prevails, bears testimony to the Catholicity 
of Christianity, and rests on the assumption that it is the only ab- 
solutely true and normal form of man's life, and so of right should, 
and of necessity also at last must, come to be universally acknowl- 
edged and obeyed. 

As regards the numerical view of the world, or its evangelization 
in extenso, this is generally admitted. All Christians are ready to 
allow, that the world in this view belongs of right to Christ, and 
that it is his purpose and plan to take possession of it universally 
iu the end as his own. The commission, " Go ye into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to every creature," at once makes it a duty 
to seek the extension of the Gospel among all men, and authorizes 
the confident expectation that this extension will finally be reached. 
The world needs Christianity, and it can never rest satisfied to be 
anything less than a full complement for this need. It has regard 
b}^ its very nature, not to any section of humanity only, not to any 
particular nation or age or race, but to humanity as such, to the 
universal idea of man, as this includes all kindred, tribes and 
tongues under the whole heaven. " The field is the world." Chris- 
tian^ can tolerate no Heathenism, Mohammedanism, or Judaism 
at its side. It may not forego its right to the poorest or most out- 
cast and degraded tribe upon the earth, in favor of any other re- 
ligion. Wherever human life reaches, it claims the right of follow- 
ing it and embracing it in the waj T of redemption. The heathen are 
given to the Son for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for His possession. It is a sound and right feeling thus which 
enters into the cause of missions in its ordinary form, and leads the 
Church to pray and put forth action in various ways for the con- 
version of the nations. 

But it is not always so clearly seen, that the intensive mastery 
of the world's life belongs just as truly as this extensive work to 
the idea of the kingdom of God, and that it ought to be therefore 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 3*75 

just as much also an object of missionary interest and zeal. The 
two interests indeed can never be entirely separated : since it be- 
longs to the very nature of Christianity to take possession in some 
way of the interior life of men, and the idea of salvation by its 
means unavoidably involves something more than a simply outward 
relation to it under any f6rm. Hence a mere outward profession 
of it is felt on all hands to be not enough ; although even this as 
far as it goes forms a part also of that universal homage which is 
its due ; but along with this is required to go also some transform- 
ation of character, as a necessary passport to the heavenly world 
towards which it looks. So in nominally Christian lands, and 
within the bounds of the outward visible Church itself, there is re- 
cognized generally the presence of a more inward living evangeliza- 
tion, a narrower missionary work, which consists in the form of 
what is sometimes called experimental religion, and has for its 
object the interior form of the life it pretends to take possession 
of, its actual substance, rather than the mere matter of it outwardly 
taken. In this country, particularly, no distinction is more familiar, 
than that between the mere outward acknowledgment of Chris- 
tianity and the power of religion in the souls of its true subjects; 
although the line of this distinction is more or less vaguely and 
variously drawn, to suit the fanc}^ of different sects. But still it is 
for the most part a very inadequate apprehension after all, that 
seems to be taken in this w T ay of the inner mission of Christianity. 
Even under its experimental and spiritual aspect, the work of the 
Gospel is too generally thought of as something comparatively out- 
ward to the proper life of man, and so a power exerted on it 
mechanically from abroad for its salvation, rather than a real re- 
demption brought to pass in it from the inmost depths of its own 
nature. According to this view, the great purpose of the Gospel is 
to save men from hell, and bring them to heaven; this is accom- 
plished by the machinery of the atonement and justification by 
faith, carrying along with it a sort of magical supernatural change 
of state and character by the power of the Holy Ghost, in con- 
formity with the use of certain means for the purpose on the part 
of men; and so now it is taken to be the great work of the Church 
to carry forward the process of deliverance, almost exclusively 
under such mechanical aspect, by urging and helping as many souls 
as possible in their separate individual character to flee from the 
wrath to come, and to secure for themselves through the grace of 
conversion a good hope against the day of judgment. 

With many of our sects at least, the idea of religion (evangelical or 



376 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

experimental religion as they are pleased to call it), would seem to 
run out almost entirely into a sort of purely outward spiritualism in 
the form now noticed, with almost no regard whatever to the actual 
contents of our life as a concrete whole. Their zeal looks to the 
conversion of men in detail, after their own pattern and scheme of 
experience, as a life-boat looks to the preservation of as many as 
possible from a drowning wreck; but beyond this it seems to be in a 
great measure without purpose or aim. Once converted and made 
safe in this magical way, the mission of the Church in regard to 
them (unless it should be found necessaiy to convert them over 
again), is felt to be virtually at an end ; and if only the whole world 
could be thus saved, there would be an end of the same mission for 
mankind altogether; we should have the millenium, and to preserve 
it for a thousand } T ears would only need afterwards to look well to 
the whole conversion of each new generation subsequent^, as it 
might come of age for such purpose. 

But, alas, how far short every such view falls of the true glorious 
idea of the kingdom of God among men, as it meets us in the Bible 
and in the necessary sense of the grand mystery of the Incarnation, 
on which the whole truth of the Bible rests. 

Even in case of the individual man, singly and separately con- 
sidered, the idea of redemption can never be answered by the imag- 
ination of a merely extensive salvation, a deliverance in the form 
of outward power, under an} T view. All admit, that his translation 
bodily as he now is in his natural state into heaven, would be for 
him no entrance really into a heavenly life. It is not in the power 
of locality or place of itself to set him in glory. Precisely the like 
contradiction is involved (although it may not be at once so gen- 
erally plain), in the supposition of a wholly ab extra transformation 
of the redeemed subject into the heavenly form of existence. This 
at best would be the creation of a new subject altogether, as much 
as if a stone were raised by a Divine fiat to the dignity of a living 
angel, and in no real sense whatever the redemption of the same 
subject into a higher order of life. No redemption in the case of 
man can be real, that is not from within as well as from without; 
that is not brought to penetrate the inmost ground of his being, 
and that has not power to work itself forth from this, outwards and 
upwards, till it shall take possession finally of the whole periphery 
of his nature, body as well as soul. This in the very nature of 
the case is a process, answerable to the universal character of our 
present life. 

To conceive of it as something which is brought to pass sud- 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 3?T 

denly and at once, without mediation and growth, is to sunder 
it from the actual constitution of humanity, to place it on the 
outside of this, and so to reduce it, in spite of all spiritualistic 
pretensions the other way, to the character of a simply mechanical 
salvation, that is at last no better than a dream. And it is of 
course much the same thing, to make the beginning here stand for 
the whole ; and so to swell the starting point of the new life out of 
all right proportion, that instead of being, like the beginning of the 
natural life itself, in a great measure out of sight and knowledge 
(or at most as a grain of mustard, the least of all seeds), it is made 
to stand forth to view empirically as the proper whole of salvation 
in this world, throwing the idea of the process which should follow 
completely into the shade, or turning it into dull unmeaning monot- 
ony and cant. 

Every such restriction of the idea of Christianity to a single 
point of the Christian life, even though it be the point where all 
individual salvation begins, is chargeable with deep and sore 
wrong to the idea as a whole, and cannot fail to be followed 1 
with disastrous consequences, wherever it may prevail, in some 
form of practical one-sided divergency, more or less morbidly fa- 
natical, from the true and proper course of the new creation in, 
Christ. The full salvation of the man turns ultimately on his full 
sanctification ; the kingdom of heaven must be in him as a reign of 
righteousness, in order that it may be revealed around him as a 
reign of glory. It must take up his nature into itself intensively, 
as leaven works itself into the whole measure of meal in which it is 
hid, in order that it may be truly commensurate with the full volume 
of his being outwardly considered. The new birth is the beginning 
of a progressive maturation, which has its full end only in the res- 
urrection; and this last, bringing with it the glorification of the 
entire man, can be rationally anticipated, only as it is felt to have 
its real possibility in the power of such a whole renovation ripening 
before to this blessed result. 

But to understand fully the inner mission of Christianity now 
under consideration, we must look be} 7 ond the merely individual 
life as such to the moral organization of society, in which alone it 
can ever be found real and complete. Pure naked individuality in 
the case of man is an abstraction, for which there is no place what- 
ever in the concrete human world. The single man is what he is 
always, only in virtue of the social life in which he is comprehended, 
and of which he is a part. His separate existence is conditioned 
universally by a general human substance beyond it, from which it 
24 



378 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

takes root, and derives both quality and strength. The idea of re- 
demption then, in his case, implies of necessity far more than any 
deliverance that can have place for his life separately regarded. 
As it must lay hold of this as such in an inward way, in order to 
become outwardly actual, so also to do this effectually it must have 
power to reach and change the general substance of humanity out 
of which the individual life is found to spring. In other words, no 
redemption can be real for man singly taken, or for any particular 
man, which is not at the same time real for humanity in its collec- 
tive view, for the fallen race as a whole. Hence it is that Chris- 
tianity, which challenges the homage of the world as such a system 
of real redemption, can never possibly be satisfied with the object 
of a simply numerical salvation, to be accomplished in favor of a 
certain number of individual men, an abstract election of single 
souls, whether this be taken as large or small, a few only or very 
many, or even all of the human family. The idea of the true neces- 
sary wholeness of humanity is not helped at all by the numerical 
extent of any such abstraction. It stands in the general nature of 
man, the human life collectively considered, as this underlies all 
such distribution, and goes before it in the order of existence, fill- 
ing it with its proper organic force and sense in the constitution of 
societ}^. 

Here especially comes into view the full form and scope of the 
work, which must take place intensively in the life of the world 
before the victory of the Grospel can be regarded as complete. Hu- 
manity includes in its general organization certain orders and 
spheres of moral existence, that can never be sundered from its idea 
without overthrowing it altogether; they enter with essential neces- 
sity into its constitution, and are full as much part and parcel of it 
all the world over as the bones and sinews that go to make up the 
body of the outward man. The family for instance and the state, 
with the various domestic and civil relations that grow out of them, 
are not to be considered factitious or accidental institutions in any 
way, continued for the use of man's life from abroad and brought 
near to it only in an outward manner. They belong inherently to 
it; it can have no right or normal character without them; and any 
want of perfection in them must even be to the same extent a want 
of perfection in the life itself as human, in which they are compre- 
hended. 

So again the moral nature of man includes in its verj T concep- 
tion the idea of art, the idea of science, the idea of business and 
trade. It carries in itself certain powers and demands that lead to 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 3 T9 

these forms of existence, as the necessary evolution of its own in- 
ward sense. Humanity stands in the activity of reason and will, 
under their proper general character. Take away from it any in- 
terest or sphere which legitimately belongs to such activity, and in 
the same measure it must cease to he a true and sound humanity 
altogether. No interest or sphere of this sort then can be allowed 
to remain on the outside of a system of redemption, which has for 
its object man as such in his fallen state. If Christianity be indeed 
such a system, it must be commensurate in full with the constitu- 
tion of humanity naturally considered ; it must have power to take 
up into itself not a part of this only but the whole of it, and by no 
possibility can it ever be satisfied with any less universal result. 

All this we say falls to the inner mission of Christianity, its des- 
tination to raise humanity, inwardly considered, to a higher power, 
a new quarhy and tone, as well as to take possession of it by terri- 
torial conquest from sea to sea and from pole to pole. And it 
needs to be well understood and kept in mind, that the first object 
here is full as needful as the second, and belongs quite as really to 
the cause of the world's evangelization. " The field is the world," 
we may say with quite as much solemnity and emphasis in this view, 
as when we speak of it under the other. As the kingdom of God 
is not restricted in its conception to any geographical limits or 
national distinctions, but has regard to mankind universally; so 
neither it is to be thought of as penetrating the organization of 
man's nature only to a certain extent, taking up one part of it into 
its constitution and leaving another hopelessly on the outside ; on 
the contraiy it must show itself sufficient to engross the whole. 
Nothing really human can be counted legitimately beyond its scope ; 
for the grand test of its truth is its absolute adequacy to cover the 
field of human existence at all points, its Catholicity in the sense 
of measuring the entire length and breadth of man's nature. Either 
it is no redemption for humanity at all, or no constituent interest 
of humanity may be taken as extrinsical ever to its rightful domain. 

It will not do to talk of any such interest as profane, in the sense 
of an inward and abiding contrariety between it and the sacredness 
of religion; as though religion might be regarded as one simply 
among other co-ordinate forms of life, with a certain territory as- 
signed to it and all beyond foreign from its control. What is realty 
human, a constitutive part of the original nature of man, may be 
indeed profaned, by being turned aside from its right use and end, 
but can never be in itself profane. On the contrary, if religion be 
the perfection of this nature, all that belongs to it must not only 



380 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

admit but require au inward union with religion, in order to its 
own completion ; and as Christianity is the end and consummation 
of all religion besides, it follows that such completion, in the case 
of every human interest, can be full}' gained at last only in the 
bosom of its all comprehensive life. The mission of Christianity 
is, not to denounce and reject any order of life belonging to primi- 
tive humanity as intrinsically hostile to God, (that would be a 
species of Manichean fanaticism) ; nor yet to acknowledge it simpl}' 
as a different and foreign jurisdiction ; but plainly to appropriate 
every order to itself, b} r so mastering its inmost sense as to set it 
in full harniony with the deeper and broader law of its own presence. 

Art, science, commerce, politics, for instance, as they enter essen- 
tially into the idea of man, must all come within the range of this 
mission ; and so far as it falls short of their full occupation at any 
given time with the power of its own divine principle, it must be 
regarded as a work still in process only towards its proper end ; 
just as really as the work of outward missions is thus in process 
also, and short of its end, so long as an}' part of the world remains 
shrouded in pagan darkness. It is fully as needful for the complete 
and final triumph of the Gospel among men, that it should subdue 
the arts, music, painting, sculpture, poetiy, &c, to its sceptre, and 
fill them with its spirit as that it should conquer in similar style 
the tribes of Africa or the islands of the South Sea. Every region 
of science, as it belongs to man's nature, belongs also to the empire 
of Christ; and this can never be complete, as long as any such 
region may remain unoccupied by its power. Philosophy too, 
whose province and need it is to bring all the sciences to unity and 
thus to fathom their, deepest and last sense, falls of right under the 
same view. Some indeed pretend, that Christianit} T and philosophy 
have properly nothing to do with each other; that the first puts 
contempt on the second; that the second in truth is a mere ignis 
fatuus at most, which all good Christians are bound to abhor and 
avoid. 

But if so, it must be considered against humanity to specu- 
late at all in this way ; whereas the whole history of the world 
proves the contrary; and it lies also in the very idea of science, 
that knowledge in this form should be sought as the necessary com- 
pletion of it under other forms. To pronounce philosophy against 
humanity, is virtually to place science universally under the like 
condemnation. And so to treat it as profane or impertinent for the 
kingdom of God, is in truth to set all science in similar relation; 
the very result, to which fanaticism has often shown itself prone to 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 381 

run, But what can be well more monstrous than that; or more 
certainly fatal in the end to the cause of Christianity ? Philosophy, 
like science and art in other forms, is of one birth with man's nature 
itself; and if Christianity be the last true and full sense of this 
nature, it is not possible that it should be either willing or able to 
shut it out from its realm. We might as soon dream of a like ex- 
clusion towards the empire of China; for it is hard to see surely 
how the idea of humanity would suffer a more serious truncation 
by this, than by being doomed to fall short of its own proper 
actualization the other way. The world without China would be 
quite as near perfection, we think, as the world without philosophy. 
Its full redemption and salvation, the grand object of the Gospel, 
and so the necessary work and mission of Christianity among men, 
include, it is plain, both interests, and we have no right ever to 
magnify the one at the cost of the other. 

Such being the general nature of this missionary work intensively 
taken, we may see at once how far it is still from its own proper 
end even in the case of the nominally Christian world itself. It is 
melancholy to think, that after nearly two thousand years which 
have passed since Christ came, so large a part of the human race 
should still be found beyond the line of Christianity outwardly con- 
sidered. But it is not always properly laid to heart, that the short- 
coming in the other view, the distance between idea and fact within 
this line, is to say the least no less serious and great. If when we 
think of the millions of Africa, India, and China, we must feel that 
the Gospel thus far has been only in progress towards its full 
triumphant manifestations in the world; this feeling must prevail 
no less, when we direct our attention to the moral, scientific, and 
political fields, which all around us appear in like barbarous estrange- 
ment from its inward law. In this view, even more emphatically 
than in the other, may we not adopt the language, Heb. ii: 8: 
"We see not yet all things put in subjection under him" — though 
nothing less than such universal subjection be needed to carry out 
the first sense of man's life, (Gen. i: 26, Ps. viii: 6-8), and so 
nothing less can satisfy the enterprise of his redemption ? 

Alas, how quite the reverse of this are we made to behold in every 
direction. Not alone do the wild powers of nature refuse to obey 
at once the will of the saints, but it is only a most partial dominion 
at best also that the Christian principle has yet won for itself even 
in the moral world. Whole territories and spheres of human life 
here have never yet been brought to anj~ true inward reconciliation 
and union with the life of the Church. Romanism has pretended 



382 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

indeed to bring them into subjection; but so far as the pretension 
has yet been made good, it has been ever in a more or less outward 
and violent way only; whereas the problem from its very nature 
requires that the relation should be one of free, loving harmony and 
not one of force. Protestantism, seeing this, has in large measure 
openly surrendered the whole point; falling over thus to the oppo- 
site extreme ; carrying the doctrine of freedom so far, that it is 
made not only to allow, but even to justify, in many cases, a full 
dissociation of certain spheres of humanit} T from the rightful sov- 
ereignity of religion. In our own time especially there is a fearful 
tendency at work under this form, which rests throughout on the 
rationalistic assumption that Christianity has no right to the uni- 
versal lordship of man's life, and which aims at nothing less accord- 
ingly than the emancipation of all secular interest from its juris- 
diction. It has become a widely settled maxim, we may say, that 
whole vast regions of humanity lie naturally and of right on the 
outside of the kingdom of God, strictly taken, and that it must ever 
be wrong to think of stretching its authority over them in an}- real 
form. 

Hence we find the arts and sciences to a great extent sun- 
dered from the idea of the Church as such; and more particularly 
politics and religion are taken to be totally separate spheres. It is 
coming to seem indeed a sort of moral truism, too plain for even 
children or fools to call in question, that the total disruption of 
Church and State, involving the full independence of all political 
interests over against the authorit}^ of the new constitution of 
things brought to pass in Christ, is the only order that can at all 
deserve to be respected as rational, or that ma}^ be taken as at all 
answerable to man's nature and God's will. And yet what a con- 
ception is that of Christianit}-, which excludes from its organic 
jurisdiction the broad vast conception of the Commonwealth or 
State ! 

We ncmy say, if we please, that such dissociation is wise and 
necessar}' for the time being, and as an interimistic, transitional 
stadium in a process that looks towards a far different ulterior end ; 
but surely we are bound to pronounce it always in its own nature 
wrong, and false to the true idea of the Gospel ; something there- 
fore which marks not the perfection, but the serious imperfection, 
rather, of the actual state of the world. The imagination that the 
last answer to the great question of the right relation of the Church 
to the State, is to be found in any theory by which the one is set 
completely on the outside of the other, must be counted essentially 



Chap. XXXIIJ catholicity 383 

anti-Christian. Christianity owns the proper freedom of man's 
nature under its common secular aspects, and can never be satisfied 
with the violent subjugation of it in a merely outward way; but it 
requires at the same time that this shall be brought to bow to its 
authority without force ; and it can never acknowledge any freedom 
as legitimate and true, that may affect to hold under a different form. 
So far short then as its actual reign in the world is found to fail of 
this universal supremacy over all the interests of life, it must be 
regarded as not having yet reached its proper end, as being still in 
the midst of an unfulfilled mission. 

Of the two parables setting forth the progressive character of the 
kingdom of God, Matth. xiii: 31-33, it is not unnatural to under- 
stand the first, that of the mustard seed namely, as referring mainly 
to its extensive growth, while the other, that of the leaven hid in 
three measures of meal, is taken to have respect rather to this in- 
tensive growth, by which the new divine nature of Christianity is 
required to penetrate and pervade always more and more the sub- 
stance of our general human life itself, with a necessity that can 
never stop till the whole mass be wrought into the same complexion. 
It is certain at all events, that the parables together refer to both 
forms of increase; for the mere taking of volume outwardly is just 
as little sufficient of itself to complete the conception of organic 
growth in the world of grace, as it is notoriously to complete the 
same conception in the world of nature. The taking of volume 
must be joined in either case with a parallel progressive taking of 
answerable inward form. The growth of the mustard seed itself 
involves this two-fold process ; for it consists not simpty in the ac- 
cumulation of size, but in the assumption at the same time of a 
certain type of vegetable life throughout the entire compass of its 
leaves and branches. 

It is, however, more particularly the image of leaven, that 
serves to bring out this last side of the subject in all its force, 
and that might seem accordingly to be specially designed for this 
purpose, in distinction from all regard to the other more out- 
ward view. The parallel, as in the case of all the New Testament 
parables, is no mere fancy or conceit, but rests on a real analogy, by 
which a lower truth or fact in the sphere of nature is found to fore- 
shadow, and as it were anticipate a higher one in the sphere of the 
spirit. Leaven is a new force introduced into the mass of meal, 
different from it, and yet having with it such inward affinity that it 
cannot fail to become one with it, and in doing so to raise it at the 
same time into its own higher nature. This, however, comes to 



384 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

pass, not abruptly nor violently, but silently and gradually, and in 
such a wa} T that the action of the meal itself is made to assist and 
carry forward the work of the leaven towards its proper end. The 
work thus is a process, the growing of the new principle continually 
more and more into the nature of the meal, till the whole is leavened. 
And so it is with the new order of life revealed through the Gospel. 
Involving as it does from the start a higher form of existence for 
humanit}^ as a whole (new and yet of kindred relation to the old), 
it is still not at once the transformation of it, in a whole and sudden 
way, into such a higher state. It must grow itself progressively 
into our nature, taking this up by degrees into its own sphere and 
bringing out thus at the same time its own full significance and 
power, in order to take possession of our nature at all in any real 
way. 

In the case of the single believer accordingly it is like leaven, 
a power commensurate from the first with the entire mass of his 
being, but needing always time and development for its full actual 
occupation; and so also in the case of our human life as a social or 
moral whole. Christianity is from the very outset potentially the 
reconstruction or new creation of man's universal nature (including 
all spheres and tracts of existence which of right belong to this 
idea), just as really as a deposit of leaven carries in it from the first 
the power of transformation for the whole mass of meal in which it 
has been hid ; but it is like leaven again also in this respect, that 
the force which it has potentially needs a continuous process of in- 
ward action to gain in a real way finally its own end. There is an 
inner mission in its way here, which grows with as much necessity- 
out of its relation to the world, as the mission it has to overshadow 
the whole earth with its branches, and which it is urged too with 
just as much necessit} T , we ma}^ add, to cany forward and fulfil. 
The prayer, Thy kingdom come, has regard to the one object quite 
as much as to the other. This comes by the depth of its entrance 
into the substance of humanity, as well as by the length and breadth 
of it, as a process of intensification no less than a process of diffu- 
sion. 

And it deserves to be well considered, that these two processes 
are not just two different necessities, set one by the side of the 
other in an external way ; that they are to be viewed rather as dif- 
ferent sides only of one and the same necessity ; since each enters 
as a condition into the fulfilment of the other, and neither can be 
rightly regarded without a due regard to both. The power of 
Christianity in particular to take possession of the world exten- 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 385 

sively, depends at last on the entrance it has gained into the life of 
the world intensively, so far as it may have already come to prevail. 
And it may well be doubted, whether it can ever complete its out- 
ward mission, in the reduction of all nations to the obedience of 
the Gospel, without at least a somewhat parallel accomplishment 
of its inward mission, in the actual Christianization of the or- 
ganic substance of humanity, to an extent far beyond all that is 
now presented within the bouncls of the outward Church. The 
leaven masters the volume of the meal in which it is set, only by 
working itself fully into its inmost nature. The conversion of 
the world in the same way is to be expected, not just from the 
multiplication of individual converts to the Christian faith, till it 
shall become thus of one measure with the earth, but as the re- 
sult rather of an actual taking up at the same time of the living 
economy of the world more and more into the Christian sphere. 
The imagination that the outward mission here may be carried 
through first, and the inner mission left behind as a work for future 
leisure, is completely preposterous. The problems then which fall 
to this last have a direct and most important bearing always on 
the successful prosecution also of the object proposed to the first. 
To make the reign of Christ more deep and inward for the life of 
the world, is at the same time to prepare the way correspondingly 
for its becoming more broad and wide. The proper solution of a 
great theoretic question, lying at the foundation of the Christian 
life, and drawing after it consequences that reach over nations 
and centuries, may be of more account for the ultimate issues of 
histon^, than the present evangelization of a whole continent like 
Africa. At this very time it is of more account by far, that the power 
of Christianity should be wrought intensively into the whole civili- 
zation of this country (the weight of which prospectively no one 
can fully estimate) ; that it should have in it not merely an out- 
ward and nominal sovereignty, but be brought also fully to actuate 
and inform its interior collective life, filling its institutions as their 
very soul, and leavening them throughout into its own divine com- 
plexion; that it should solve the problem of Church and State in 
a really Christian way, so as to bind them into one with free inward 
reconciliation, instead of throwing them hopelessly apart; that it 
should take possession truly of the art and literature of the country, 
its commerce and science and philosophy as well as its politics, 
passing by no tract of humanity as profane and yet acknowledging 
no tract as legitimate on the outside of its own sphere and sway : 
all this, we say, is an object far more near to the final redemption 



386 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of the world, and of far more need at this time (if it might be ac- 
complished), for the bringing in of the milleninm than the conver- 
sion of all India or China. The life of the Church is the salvation 
of the world. 

From the whole subject we draw in conclusion the following re- 
flections : 

1. From the view now taken of the proper Catholicism or whole- 
ness of Christianit}^, we may see at' once that it by no means implies 
the necessary salvation of all men. This false conclusion is drawn 
by Universalists, only by confounding the idea of the whole with 
the notion of all ; whereas in truth they are of altogether different 
force and sense. As hundreds of blossoms may fall and perish 
from a tree, without impairing the true idea of its whole life as this 
is reached finally in the fruit towards which all tends from the be- 
ginning, so may we conceive also of multitudes of men born into 
the world, the natural posteritj^ of Adam, and coming short of the 
proper sense of their own nature as this is completed in Christ, 
without aii3 T diminution whatever of its true universalness under 
such form. Even in the case of our natural humanity, the whole 
in which it consists is by no means of one measure merely with the 
number of persons included in it; it is potentially far more than 
this, being determined to its actual extent by manifold limitations 
that have no necessity in itself; for there might be thousands be- 
sides born into the world, which are never born into it in fact. 

Why then should it be thought that the higher form of this same 
humanity which is reached by Christ, and without which the other 
must alwaj^s fall short of its own destination, in order to be full 
and universal in its own character, must take up into itself literally 
all men? Why may not thousands fail to be born permanently into 
this higher power of our universal nature, just as thousands fail of 
a full birth also into its first natural power, without any excluding 
limitation in the character of the power itself? Those who thus 
fail in the case of the second creation fail at the same time of course 
of the true end of their own being, and so may be said to perish 
more really than those who fall short of an actual human life in the 
first form ; yet it by no means follows from this again that such 
failure must involve annihilation or a return to non-existence. It 
mnj be a continuation of existence ; but of existence under a curse, 
morally crippled and crushed, and hopelessly debarred from the 
sphere in which it was required to become complete. To be thus 
out of Christ is for the subjects of such failure indeed an exclusion 
from the true and full idea of humanity, the glorious orb of man's 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 381 

life in its last and only absolute and eternally perfect form ; but for 
this, life itself involves no limitation or defect. The orb is at all 
points round and full. 

2. As the wholeness in question is not one with the numerical 
all of the natural posterity of Adam, so neither may it be taken 
again as answerable simply to any less given number, selected out 
of the other all for the purpose of salvation. This idea of an 
abstract election, underlying the whole plan of redemption, and cir- 
cumscribing consequently the real virtue of all its provisions by 
such mechanical limitation, is in all material respects the exact 
counterpart of that scheme of universal salvation which has just 
been noticed. It amounts to nothing, so far as the nature of the 
redemption is concerned, that it is made to be for all men in one 
case and only for a certain part of them in the other. In both 
cases a mere notional all, a fixed finite abstraction, is substituted 
for the idea of an infinite concrete whole, and the result is a me- 
chanical ab extra salvation, instead of a true organic redemption, 
unfolding itself as the power of a new life from withtn. The proper 
wholeness of Christianity is more a great deal than any arithmetical 
sum, previously made up under another form, for its comprehension 
and use. It implies parts of course, and in this way at last definite 
number and measure, and so in the case of its subjects also a veri- 
table " election of grace ; " but it makes all the difference in the 
World, whether the parts are taken to the factoral making up of the 
whole, or come into view as its product and growth, whether their 
number and measure be settled by an outward election or deter- 
mined by an election that springs from within. A tree has a definite 
number of branches and leaves — so mairy, and not more nor less ; 
but who would think of looking for the ground of this be}^ond the 
nature of the tree itself, and the conditions that rule the actual de- 
velopment of its life? The law of determination here is something 
very different from the law that determines the imitation of a tree 
in wax or the composition of a watch. So the election of grace in 
the case of the new creation holds in Christ, and not in any view 
taken of humanity aside from his person. 

3. The Catholic or universal character of the Church thus, we 
may easily see farther, does not depend at any time upon its merel}' 
numerical extent, whether this be large or small. An organic 
whole continues the same (the mustard seed for instance), through 
all stages of its development, though for a long time its actual 
volume and form may fall far short of what they are destined to be 
in the end, and must be too in order to fulfil completely its inward 



388 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

sense. So the ivhole fact of Christianity gathers itself up funda- 
mentally into the single person of Christ, and is found to grow 
forth from this literally as its root. The mystery of the Incarna- 
tion involves in itself potentially a new order of existence for the 
world, which is as universal in its own nature as the idea of hu- 
manity, and by which only it is possible for this to be advanced 
finally to its own full and perfect realization. Those who affect to 
find this unintelligibly mystical and transcendental, would do well 
to consider that every higher order of existence, even in the sphere 
of nature itself, carries in it a precisely similar relation to the mass 
of matter, surrounding it under a lower form, which it is appointed 
to take up and transform by assimilation into its own superior t} T pe. 
The Second Adam is the root of the full tree of humanity in a far 
profounder sense than the First; and it is only as the material of it 
naturally considered comes to be incorporated into this, that it can 
be said to be raised into the same sphere at all ; its relation to it 
previously being at best but that of the unleavened meal to the new 
power at work in its bosom, or that of the unassimilated element 
to the buried grain which is destined b}^ means of it to wax into 
the proportions of a great plant or tree. So too from the root up- 
wards, from the fountain onwards, the new order of life, which we 
call the Church or the Kingdom of God, remains throughout one 
and Catholic. It owns no co-ordination with the idea of man's life 
under any different form. It is the ultimate, universal sense of 
man's nature, the entire sphere of its perfection, the whole and only 
law of its final consummation. With this character, however, the 
Church can never be content to rest in a merel} T partial revelation 
of its power among men, but is urged continually b} T its very nature 
to take actual possession of all the world, as we have already seen, 
both extensively and intensively. Here we have of course the idea 
of a process, as something involved in the very conception itself 
which we have in hand. As an article of faith, the Catholicit}- of 
the Church expresses a present attribute in all ages; it is not drawn 
simply from the future, as a proleptical declaration of what is to 
be true hereafter, though it be not true now; the ivhole presence 
of the new creation is lodged in its constitution from the start, and 
through all centuries. But who will pretend that this has ever yet 
had its proper actualization in the living world? The Catholic 
quality and force of Christianity go always along with it; but in- 
numerable hindrances are at hand to obstruct and oppose its action ; 
and its full victory in this view accordingly, as well as in the view 
of its other attributes, is to be expected only hereafter. To believe 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 389 

in the Church as universal or Catholic, it is not necessary that we 
should see it in full actual possession of the whole world ; for when 
has that been the case yet, and what less would it be than the pres- 
ence of the milleninm in the most absolute sense? It is to believe, 
however, that the whole power by which this is to be reached is 
already at work in its constitution, and that its action looks and 
strives always towards such end, as the only result that can fairly 
express its necessary inward meaning and truth. 

4. The Catholicity of the Church, as now described, involves of 
course the idea also of its unity and exclusiveness. As being the 
true whole of humanity, it can admit no rival or co-ordinate form 
of life (much less any more deep and so more comprehensive than 
itself), and it must necessarily exclude thus as false and contrary 
to humanity itself all that may affect to represent this beyond its 
own range and sphere. 

5. No other order of human life can have the same character. It 
is not of the nature of the civil state or commonwealth to be thus 
Catholic ; and still less does it belong to an} T single constituent 
sphere of such political organization, separately taken. Even re- 
ligion, which claims to be the last sense of man's life from the start, 
and which is therefore in consistency bound and urged under all 
forms to assert some sort of whole or universal title in its own 
favor, is found to be in truth unequal always to this high pretension, 
till it comes to its own proper and only sufficient completion in 
Christ. No system of Paganism, of course, could ever be Catholic. 
So a Catholic Mohammedanism is a contradiction in terms. More 
than this, it never lay in the nature of Judaism itself, with all its 
truth, to take up into itself the whole life of the world. To do so, 
it must pass into a higher form, and so lose its own distinctive 
character, in Christianity. No faith could say truly : " I believe in 
a Holy Catholic Judaism," — even if all nations were brought to 
submit to circumcision before its eyes ; for it is not in the power of 
Judaism as. such to possess and represent in full harmony the whole 
idea of humanity ; and what is thus not in itself possible, and so 
not true, can never be the object really of faith in its true form. 
Judaism is not the deepest power of man's life in the form of re- 
ligion, and for this reason alone it must be found in the end a com- 
paratively partial and relative power; leaving room for a different 
consciousness over against itself, with a certain amount of legiti- 
macy and right too in the face of its narrow claims, under the gen- 
eral form of Gentilism. This contradiction is brought to an end 
in Christ (the true Peace of the world, as we have it, Eph. ii: 



390 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

14-18), in and b} T whom religion, the inmost fact of man's nature, 
is carried at once to its last and most perfect significance, and so 
to the lowest profound of this nature at the same time ; with power 
thus to take up the entire truth of its own universally comprehen- 
sive law; healing its disorders, restoring its harmony, and raising it 
finally to immortalrty and glory. Only what is in this way deeper 
than all besides, can be at the same time truly Catholic, of one 
measure with the whole compass and contents of our universal life. 

6. As no other form of religion can be Catholic, so it lies in the 
very nature of Christianity, as here shown, to have this character. 
It must be Catholic. Conceive of it, or try to exhibit it, as in its 
constitution less comprehensive than the whole nature of man, or 
as not sufficient to take this up universal^ into its sphere of re- 
demption, and you wrong it in its inmost idea. It must be com- 
mensurate with the need and misery of the world as a whole, or 
come under its own reproach of having begun to build where it 
has no power to finish. Say, that it is for all mankind, except the 
Malay race or the many millions of China; and our whole sense at 
once revolts against the declaration as monstrous. Substitute for 
such geographical limitation the notion of an invisible line, in the 
form of an outward unconditional decree, setting a part of the race 
on one side in a state of real salvabilit} T , and another part of it on 
the other side in a state of necessary reprobation, the atonement 
being in its own nature available or of actual force in one direction 
only and not in the other ; and the spirit of the whole Xew Testa- 
ment again rises into solemn protest. Under the same general 
view again it is monstrous, as we have already seen, to conceive of 
a line being interposed in the way of Christianity, in the interior 
organism of man's general nature itself; leaving one tract of it free 
to the occupancy of this new power, but requiring it to stop on the 
frontier limits of another (politics, trade, science, art, philosophy) ; 
as though it were deep enough and broad enough to take in a part 
of the great fact of humanit} 7 only, but not the whole. 

Or take now finally another form of limitation, not unfrequentl} T 
forced on the idea of what is called the Church in these last days. 
Suppose a line cutting the universal process of humanity, as a fact 
never at rest but in motion always from infancj- to old age, into two 
great sections ; for the one of which only there is room or place in 
the restorational S3 T stem here under consideration, while the other, 
including all infants, is hopelessly out of its reach — unless death so 
intervene as to make that possible in another world b} T God's power, 
which is not possible here by his grace. Is the thought less mon- 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 391 

stroas, we ask, than any of the suppositions which have gone 
before? The Redemption of the Gospel, as it is the absolute end 
of all religion besides and the full destiny of man, cannot be less 
broad in its own nature than the whole life it proposes to renovate 
and redeem. Shall there be imagined any room or place in this for 
the dark reign of sin — any island of the sea, any remote nation or 
tribe, any reprobate caste, any outside moral tract, any stadium of 
infancy or unripe childhood — where the reign of grace (formed to 
overwhelm it, Rom. v: 15-21), has no power to follow and make 
itself triumphantly felt ? That were indeed to wrong this kingdom 
in its primary conception. It must be Catholic, the true whole of 
God's image in man, the recovery of it potentially from the centre 
of his nature out to its farthest periphery, in order to be itself the 
truth and no lie. 

7. As the attribute of Catholicity is distinctively characteristic 
of the Church as such, it follows that no mere sect or fragment of 
this can affectively appropriate the title. The idea of a sect is, that 
a part of the Christian world has been brought to cut itself off from 
the rest of it, on the ground of some particular doctrinal or practical 
interest, and now affects to have within itself under such isolated 
view all Church powers and resources, though admitting at the 
same time the existence of such powers and resources in other 
bodies also with which it owns no real Church union. This is a 
vast contradiction from the very start, which is found to work itself 
out afterwards into all sorts of anomaly and falsehood. The sect 
virtually puts itself always into the place of the Church, and in 
spite of its own principle of division is then forced to arrogate to 
itself the proper rights and prerogatives of this divine organization, 
as though it were identical with its own narrow limits. In other 
words, it is forced to act as the whole, when it is in truth b}^ its 
own confession again only a segment or part. So far as any rem- 
nant of Church feeling remains (such as is needed for instance to 
distinguish a sect in its own mind from a voluntary confederation 
for religious ends), it must necessarily include in it the idea of 
Catholicity or wholeness, as an indestructible quality of such 
thought ; for as it lies in the very conception of a sphere to be 
round, so precisely does it lie in the very conception of the Church 
to be Catholic, that is, to be as universal in its constitution as hu- 
manity itself, with no tract or sphere beyond. Hence every sect, 
in pretending to be sufficient within itself for all church ends, prac- 
tically at least if not theoretically, asserts in its own favor powers 
and prerogatives that are strictly universal, as broad as the idea of 



392 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

religion itself under its most perfect and absolute form ; an assump- 
tion that goes virtually to deny and set aside all similar Church 
character in the case of other sects ; for the case forbids the notion 
of two or more systems, separately clothed with the same universal 
force. Nothing short of such claim to exclusive wholeness is in- 
volved in the right each sect asserts for itself, to settle doctrines, 
make laws, and ply the keys, in a way that is held to be for the 
bounds of its own communion absolutely whole and final. Such 
ecclesiastical acts either mean nothing, sink into the character of 
idle sham, or else they are set forth as the utterances of a real 
Church authorit} 7 which are taken to be as wide as the idea of the 
Church itself. Eveiy sect in this way, so far as it secretly owns 
the power of this idea, puts on in mock proportion at least all the 
airs of Rome. But now, on the other hand, the inward posture of 
every sect again, as such, is at war with Catholicity, and urges it 
also to glory in the fact. The sect mind roots itself in some sub- 
jective interest, made to take the place of the true objective whole 
of Christianity, and around this it affects to revolve pedantically as 
an independent world or sphere. Then it is content to allow other 
spheres be3^ond itself, under the like independent form. So its 
universal rights and powers, as we had them just before (rights and 
powers that mean nothing ecclesiastically save as they are thus 
Catholic and not partial), shrink into given bounds; often ridic- 
ulously narrow; much like the power of those old heathen deities, 
whose universal sway was held to stop short with the limits of the 
nation that worshipped at their shrines. It is a power dogmatical, 
diatactical, and diacritical, as they call it, which is of full conclu- 
sive force (the "keys of the kingdom of heaven "), for one man but 
not for another his next neighbor ; for James but not for John ; for 
such as have agreed to own it but not for those who have been 
pleased to own a different Church; universal as the boundaries of 
the particular denomination from which it springs, the numerical 
all of a given sect, but of no force whatever beyond this for the 
mighty whole of which the sect is confessedly only a fraction and 
part. Here comes out of course the inward lie of the sect system, 
forcing it to falsify on one side what it affirms of itself on another. 
Sects are constitutionally uncatholic. Commonly they dislike even 
the word, and are apt to be slry of it, as though it smacked of 
Romanism, and as having a secret consciousness that it expresses 
a quality of the Church which their position disowns. By this, 
however, they in truth condemn themselves. It is the very curse 
of sect, to bear testimony here to the true idea of the Church, while 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 393 

it must still cry out, What have I to do with thee, thou perfection 
of beaut} 7 ! No sect as such has power to be Catholic; just as 
little at least as Judaism has ever had any such power. No one 
can say truly: "I believe in a Holy Catholic Lutheranism, Presby- 
terianism, Methodism, or any like partial form of the Christian 
profession," as he may say: "I believe in the Holy Catholic 
Church." For every such interest owns itself to be a part only of 
what the full fact of Christianity includes, and is so plainly in its 
own nature. How then should it ever be for faith the whole? 
What sect of those now existing, Lutheran, German Reformed, 
Methodist, &c, can seriously expect ever to take up the universal 
world of man's life into its bosom — unless by undergoing at last 
such a change in its own constitution, as shall cause the notion of 
sect to lose itself altogether in another far higher and far more 
glorious conception ? No such has faith, or can have faith, in any 
universality of this sort as appertaining to itself; for to have it, 
would be to feel in the same measure a corresponding right and 
necessity to extend its authority over the whole world; which we 
know is not the case. It belongs to that which is in its own nature 
universal, to lay its hand imperatively on what it is found to em- 
brace. Catholicity asks willing subjects indeed, but not optional. 
It says not, you. may be mine, but you must. The true whole is at 
the same time inwardly and forever necessary. But what sect 
thinks of being Catholic in this style? Is it not counted Catholic 
rather in the sect vocabulary, to waive altogether the idea of any 
such universal and necessary right, and to say virtually: "We 
shall be happy to take charge of you if you see fit to be ours — but 
if not, may God speed you under some different conduct and care?" 
Not only the sect itself, but the sect consciousness also, the sect 
mind, is constitutionally fractional, an arbitral part which can 
by no possibility feel or act as a necessary whole. 

8. In this w^ay we are brought finally to see the difference, be- 
tween the true Catholicism of Christianity, and the mock liberalism 
which the world is so fond of parading on all sides in its name. 
This last appears in very different forms, though it ends always in 
the same general sense. Sometimes it openly substitutes the idea 
of mere humanism for that of Christianity, and so prates of the 
universal brotherhood of man, as though this were identical with, 
the kingdom of God, and sentimental philanthropy the same thing, 
with religion. In another shape, it is found preaching toleration 
among opposing sects, exhorting them to lay aside their asperities, 
and endeavoring, it may be, to bring them to some sort of free and, 
25 



394 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

independent confederation (such as the Peace Societ} T aims at 
among nations), that shall prove the Church one in spite of its 
divisions. Then again it comes before us in the character of an 
open war against all sects, calling upon men to forsake them as in 
their very nature uncatholic, and to range themselves under the 
standard of general Christianity, with no creed but the Bible, and 
no rule for the use of it but private judgment. And here it is, that 
the spirit in question often comes to look like an angel of light, by 
contrast with the demon of sectarianism which it pretends to cast 
out ; so that to many it seems impossible to distinguish it from the 
true genius of Catholicity itself, as we are taught to acknowledge 
this in the old Church Creed. But there is just this world-wide 
difference between the two, that the one is positive and concrete, 
while the other in all its shapes is purely negative and so without 
real substance altogether. This is at once apparent, where mere 
philanthropism is made to stand for religion; the liberality it affects 
has indeed no limits, but it is just because the religion it represents 
has no contents ; and it is of one measure with the natural life of man, 
because it adds nothing to this and has no power whatever to lift it 
into any higher sphere. The same vast defect, however, goes along 
with the pseudo-catholic theory also, in its other more plausible 
forms. The universality it proposes is not made to rest in the idea 
of the Church itself, as the presence of a real concrete power in the 
world, with capacity and mission to raise the natural life of man to a 
higher order (the Body of Christ), which in such view implies his- 
torical substance, cariying in itself the laws and conditions of its own 
being. All this men may believe, but have no ability to make more 
account of than they may make of the natural world. Not in this 
is it made to rest, we sa} T , the indubitable sense of the old Creed, 
but in the conception rather of the mere outward all of a certain 
number of men, or parties of men in world convention represented, 
who consent to be of one mind in the main on the great subject of 
the Gospel, and only need to extend such voluntary association far 
enough to take in finally the entire human family. All ends in an 
abstraction, which resolves itself at last siniply into the notion of 
humanity in its natural character, as bringing into it no new whole 
whatever for its organic elevation to a higher sphere. There is no 
mystery accordingly ever in this pseudo-catholicism; it needs no 
faith for its apprehension ; but on the contraiy falls in readily with 
every sort of rationalistic tendency and habit. Sects too, that hate 
Catholicism in the true sense, find it very eas}- to be on good terms 
with it under such mock form; the most unchurchlv and uncatholic 



Chap. XXXII] catholicity 395 

among them, taking the lead ordinarily in all sorts of buttery twad- 
dle and sham in the name of Christian union. The purely negative 
character of the spirit is farther shown, in its open disregard for all 
past history. It acknowledges no authority in this form, no con- 
fession, no creed; but will have it, that Christianity is something 
to be produced by all men, in every age, as a new fact fresh from 
the Bible and themselves. But how then can it be taken to have 
any substance of its own in the actual world, any wholeness that is 
truly concrete, and not simply notional and abstract? Catholic 
and historical (which at last means also apostolical) go necessarily 
hand in hand together. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

A FTER the Synod of York Dr. Berg continued his opposition to 
-£a~ the Mercersburg Professors as opportunities presented them- 
selves, at Classis, at Synod, through the Messenger, or his own or- 
gan, the Protestant Quarterly, gaining adherents mostly from the 
outside of the Church, but comparatively few from within. As both 
he and his followers did little or nothing to promote the general in- 
terests of their own denomination, those upon whom the chief bur- 
dens lay had no sympathy with him in mere negative opposition, or 
what seemed to them mere faction. The people generally felt that 
his protestations embodied a foreign spirit, at war with the life and 
traditions of their own Church, and gave him little aid or comfort. 
Early in the year 1852, contrary to his utterances at Synod, Dr. Berg 
concluded to withdraw from the ground and seek a more congenial 
home in another denomination. He was successful in carrying with 
him a large part of his congregation in Philadelphia, which went out 
with him, erected a new church in another part of the city, and con- 
nected themselves with the Dutch Reformed Church. The part}* 
that seceded left the congregation, which he had served for years, 
in a distressed condition, in fact, a mere wreck. It was one of the 
oldest and wealthiest in the denomination, and might, under proper 
influences, have been made the most influential in good works among 
its sister churches. The reasons assigned for such a sudden and 
violent change the pastor set forth in his Valedictory, which was 
published in pamphlet form for a wider circulation. He objected 
to various articles in the Mercersburg Review, but more specifically 
to the action of the Synod of Lancaster in 1851, in refusing to ac- 
cept of Dr. Nevin's resignation as Professor of theology at once 
and without further delay. To him it was an endorsement of his 
doctrines, and this he affirmed brought him to an issue with the 
Synod and the Church itself. The Valedictory was of no very 
peaceful character; for the most part it was a characteristic as- 
sault upon the Professors at Mercersburg, to a large extent sensa- 
tional, and apparently to man}* on the outside, who knew little or 
nothing about the nature of the questions at issue, a sublime de- 
fence of the faith once delivered to the saints. Under these cir- 
cumstances it became necessary for Dr. Nevin, in order to destroy 
the effect of this secession and farewell sermon, to stand up both 
on the offensive and the defensive. His reply to "Dr. Berg's Last 

(396) 



Chap. XXXIII] dr. berg's last words 397 

Words," or "some notice" of it, as he said, appeared in the May 
number of the Revieiv for 1852. We here give his replies to a few 
of the numerous accusations which were marshalled in line against 
him from the Philadelphia pulpit. 

"The next accusation of Dr. Berg relates to the doctrine of jus- 
tification by faith; which we in particular are said to have denied, 
in our work entitled the Mystical Presence, by making the relation 
of Christ to His people to be such, that His righteousness is not 
merely set to their credit or account, by a fiction of law in an out- 
ward forensic way, but is to be regarded as immanent in their very 
nature itself. This he will have to mean, that the believer is justi- 
fied only by his own inherent or personal holiness, resulting from 
his union with Christ. Long ago we took some pains to show that 
no such construction of our language was right. But it has not 
suited Dr. Berg to bear anything of that sort in mind; and so we 
here have the old charge publicly paraded before the world again, 
without any qualification or reserve, just as though the ninth com- 
mandment had been stricken from the decalogue, or were of no 
force at all for a true Albigensian 'witness,' sweating and stagger- 
ing under the weight of so big a cause. Justification, we know, is 
not sanctification. But still the first must be the real ground or 
foundation of the second, and this requires that it should be some- 
thing more than an outward act, that comes to no union whatever 
with the life of the sinner. It imputes to him the righteousness of 
Christ, by setting him in connection with the power of it as a new and 
higher order of life, with grace in distinction from nature, wrought 
out in the bosom of humanity by Christ as the Second Adam. 

" This implies that what is imputed or made over to men is not 
something out of them and beyond them altogether, but a fact al- 
ready established in their nature itself, although a Divine act is 
needed to bring them into communication with it as individuals. 
In such view, the righteousness of Christ, the power of His atone- 
ment, the glorious fact of redemption, may be regarded and spoken 
of as immanent now in our nature, just as the law of sin and death 
is immanent in it also under its merely Adamic view, making room 
for a corresponding development of individual life. Natural birth 
sets us in connection with human nature, as fallen in Adam and 
under the curse ; regenerating grace sets us in connection with the 
same nature, as recovered from the curse, and so made capable of 
righteousness, through union with Christ. The actual individual 
life in either case, with such inherent properties as it may be found 
to possess, is conditioned by the presence of a real possibility go- 



398 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

ing before in the general life, out of which it springs. This real 
possibility, the potential underling the actual, is the one man's 
disobedience in the first case, wherebj- many are made sinners, and 
in the second case the obedience of one by which man}- are made 
righteous, both immanent in humanity for their own momentous 
ends." — Passing over Dr. Berg's other objections to the false doc- 
trines for which the Church as alleged had made itself responsible 
by sustaining its Professor, we pass on to the last, which probably 
in his mind was the most dangerous of all. 

" The last offence with which we are charged in this valedictory 
demonstration, is our refusal to fall in with the anti-popery hue 
and crj T against the Roman Catholic Church. This evidentfy is a 
minor point in the general bill of wrongs. It forms the culmina- 
tion of the universal mischief, the 'unkindest cut of all' in the 
whole list of our provocations. Much else might have been pa- 
tiently borne. But here patience itself is put fairly out of breath. 

" Dr. Berg, it is well known, has a mortal antipatlrv to Roman- 
ism. He has long been distinguished as one of the school, which 
makes a vast merit of hating and cursing the Pope as Antichrist, 
and builds its first and greatest pretension to what it calls evangel- 
ical piety, on its want of all charity towards Papists wherever 
found. He has staked his personal credit, his popularity as a min- 
ister, his reputation as a theologian, on the anti-popery cause, as- 
serted and maintained in this radical style ; and the consequence 
has been, as usual, that the cause in such form has grown to be for 
him a sort of 'fixed idea,' synommious in some sense with the 
identity of his personal life. He has preached on it ; made speeches 
on it ; written a book on it, with a glorifying introduction from 
Dr. Brownlee. 'I shall never apologize,' he writes years ago, 
1 either to the people of my own charge or to the public, for preach- 
ing and writing against Popery ; for I am not ashamed of the Gos- 
pel of Christ ; neither am I afraid to lift up m} T voice and to cry 
aloud against the abomination of sin ; and to rebuke, so far as my 
influence extends, the impudence of Antichrist. — For the system 
of Popery, 'the urvsteiy of iniquity, in all its deceivabieness of 
unrighteousness,' and in all the shades and grades of its known 
and unknown abominations, I do entertain the most heaiiy abom- 
ination. I believe it to be the arch-deceiver of precious souls and 
the Master-piece of Satan.' (See Berg's Lectures on Romanism, 
Pp. 23 and 24). Any quantity of similar stuff is found in other 
parts of the same book, as well as in the scurrilous pages of the 
Protestant Quarterly. 



Chap. XXXIII] dr. berg's last words 399 

" In all this it is easy to read the symptoms of a very virulent 
affection. For one who surrenders himself to it, the anti-popery 
spirit is in truth a disease of the very worst kind. We know of no 
mental habit, short of absolute insanity, that seems to be more un- 
favorable to calm self-possession, to the exercise of clear sober 
judgment, or to the grace of godly sincerity and truth in the in- 
ward parts. Where it has come to be fully established, there is an 
end both of charity and reason so far as the Church of Rome is 
concerned. The mind loses its hold on proper realities, and falls 
as it were under a sort of magical spell or ban, which makes it im- 
possible to see anything in its true color and right shape. It moves 
in a world of perversions, distortions, exaggerations, contradictions, 
and lies, from which, however, while the fixed idea lasts, no friendly 
light has any power to set it free. We have an exemplification of 
this in Dr. Berg. In his battles with Romanism, he spoils his own 
cause continually by extravagance and excess. He persecutes and 
spits venom, while affecting to play the bully for toleration and 
peace. 

"He is irreverent and profane in the treatment of sacred things, 
while heaping accusations of profanity on Rome. He sets himself 
up, as the manifestation of private judgment to pull down the 
Pope ; holding with great show of zeal that all men have the right 
of thinking as they choose, provided they think with /urn, and not 
some other way. He is great for free inquiry and light, and yet 
takes good care not to meet any question at issue in a really hon- 
orable and manly style; while all sorts of declamation, sophistry 
and falsehood are resorted to for the purpose' of maintaining a 
show and sham of argument, where all argument in its true form 
is wanting. 

"Such is the general style and fashion of this intolerant anti- 
popery school. No one, who has not been led to examine the matter 
seriously for himself, can have any idea of the extent to which 
falsehood and misrepresentation are carried in the common warfare 
upon the Church of Rome. No Church, as the great Dr. Johnson 
used to say, has been more monstrously slandered. Our religious 
papers, it is to be feared, lie here, too generally, under dreadful guilt. 
The warfare in question is conducted too generally without any re- 
gard to principle. It is forgotten that great interests of religion, 
deep and solemnly important truths, in the very nature of the case, 
are involved in Romanism; and the whole object then is merely to 
overthrow and destroy, regardless of all consequences that may go 
along with the wreck. Anti-popery in such form is purely nega- 



400 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

tive. It seeks onl\ T to break down ; and every blow is welcome 
that looks this way, though it be never so rude and blind. 

"When we are taxed with refusing to succumb to the dictation 
of this fanatical and tyrannical school, we very readily admit the 
truth of the charge. We do not regard the Papac}% as such, to be 
Antichrist. There have been, we doubt not at all, many pious 
Popes. We do not believe that the Catholic Church was the syna- 
gogue of Satan, for more than a thousand 3 T ears before the time of 
Luther, and are not willing to bastardize Protestantism itself, by 
making the Roman baptism from which it springs to be but a bap- 
tism of the Devil, unchurching thus at the same time with a single 
stroke of the pen the whole Christianity of the Middle Ages and of 
the ages before, away back to the days of Cyprian and Tertullian. 
We do not feel bound at all to follow the sense which Dr. Berg is 
pleased to put into two or three Bible texts, against the authority 
of Grotius, Hammond, Hengstenberg and Stuart, and we know not 
how mam^ Protestant critics besides. It is no part of our religion 
to hate and curse Catholics, to lampoon their priesthood, to make a 
mock of their worship, or to treat their holy things with scorn and 
contempt. We have read too much church history, and looked too 
widely into the present state of the world for that. This modera- 
tion may be veiy unpalatable to Dr. Berg, and the school to which 
he belongs. But we cannot help it. Such is the state of our mind. 

"The question here is only, whether it be an offence against 
Protestant orthodoxy to think in this way. That is what Dr. Berg 
maintains. It is not with him a matter of freedom, to differ here 
from the rule to which he is so unhappily sworn. He lays it down 
as a foundation principle that Rome is Antichrist, Babylon," and 
Amalek; that the Pope is officially the Man of Sin; that Mede's 
Key to the Prophecies is infallibly true ; and that Popery has been 
from first to last 'the Master-piece of Satan.' This, we are told, is 
the onl3 T theory by which Protestantism can stand. It must pass 
for a term of orthodox} T , an article of faith. Since when, however, 
we ask in reply, has any such narrow and inquisitorial rule been in 
force? In what Draconian code is it now to be found? When, 
where, and how, especially, has the German Reformed Church 
erected an}^ test of this sort, to bind the conscience of her ministers, 
either in Europe or America ? The test is arbitraiy altogether, an 
imposition smuggled in privily to subvert 'the liberty which we 
have in Christ Jesus,' and to 'bring us into bondage.' We disown 
it; aud we give no place to it by subjection, not even for an hour, 
that the truth of the Gospel maj 1 - remain without damage or harm. 



Chap. XXXIIIJ dr. berg's last words 401 

We deny the right of any man, or any set and party of men, to 
frame rides and constitutions for us in this high-handed autocratic 
and overbearing style. Those who choose to make a large part of 
their religion consist in abusing and slandering Romanism, are at 
liberty for themselves to indulge as far as they please their own 
malevolent taste, and there is nothing to hinder them either from 
doing what they can, by rant or slang, to make others of the same 
mind. But let them stick to moral suasion. When they mount 
the tripod, and claim to be oracles, and affect to launch thunder- 
bolts, making their miserable hobbies articles of faith, and then de- 
nouncing as heretics all those who refuse to take up the same song, 
it is high time to let them know that they are driving things quite 
too fast and too far. Whatever may come of them hereafter, their 
hobbies are not yet fully installed, for universal Protestantism, as 
oracles and articles of faith. 

u So much for the burden of Dr. Berg's Farewell Words, as di- 
rected mainly against ourselves. We are now ready for the con- 
sideration of it, as a cry against the German Reformed Church. 
That is the main end of the whole proclamation. It is intended to 
be an apology, as we have seen, for an act of voluntary secession. 
Dr. Berg wishes to phvv the martyr. He claims to be a seceder for 
conscience's sake. This involves necessarily the idea of an issue 
with the whole body, which he is led thus heroically to forsake. 
To make out his case, it is not enough to muster charges, like those 
we have just been considering, against one man or another singly 
taken ; that would be a poor reason for so big a step ; it must be 
contrived in some way to give the matter a far more general char- 
acter, and to bring in the whole church as particeps criminis, as a 
party to the alleged offences. Only in that form do we get at last 
a nodus vindice dignus, the full opportunity and fit occasion for 
such a Sampson Agonistes to put forth all his strength." — As a 
matter of course Dr. Nevin found it to be a much easier matter to 
defend the Reformed Church against the charges made by Dr. Berg 
for dereliction of duty, and for endorsing dangerous errors in allow- 
ing her Professors to remain in their chairs at Mercersburg, which 
he proceeded to do thoroughly and exhaustively, as the reader may 
imagine from what has been said elsewhere in this history, and 
need not be repeated here. 

It was an opinion entertained at the time by moderate and 
thoughtful persons that Dr. Berg's demonstration in Philadelphia 
was only a part of a movement that extended beyond the Reformed 
Church, whose object was to revolutionize, or disintegrate it into 



402 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

fragments. The virulence of some of the religious papers in sym- 
pathy with Dr. Berg seemed to favor such a supposition. The se- 
cession of the Rev. Jacob Helfenstein, and his congregation at 
Germantown, Pa., and their formal passing over into the Presby- 
terian Church, carding with them their church property, which had 
belonged to the Reformed Church for more than a century, also 
seemed to show that there was some kind of concerted action. But 
whatever ma,y have been the true state of the case, the Reformed 
Church retained her dignity, and did not suffer herself to be moved 
from her staid sense of propriety by the excitement and clamor of 
the hour. Dr. Xevin felt the gravity of the situation, and, hy a 
trenchant article in the Revieio, sought to break the force of Dr. 
Berg's last act and words, at least, in the Reformed Church, in 
which he was successful. In doing so he appealed not only to ar- 
guments and reason, but called to his assistance some forcible lan- 
guage, which showed that he could strike back no less than to re- 
ceive blows. We here give a few specimens of his language, which 
proved that he could wield the pen of a Junius himself, when he 
thought that occasion or duty called for it. 

"It is generally known," he says, "that Rev. Dr. Berg, who has 
long been ambitious to head a party and create trouble in the Ger- 
man Reformed Church, \>y birth a Moravian, by education an 
American Puritan of the most thorough anti-popery stamp, has 
seen fit to do what he ought to have done long ago, abandon the 
denomination in which he has found himself so poorly at home for 
the purpose of trying his fortuue in another. Pains have been 
taken to make the event notorious. It was evidently expected to 
create a sensation ; and this valedictory discourse forms part of 
the apparatus, or what we may call stage-thunder, which has been 
ingeniously contrived in aid of such end. 

"The sensation has not indeed come to much. The stage-thun- 
der has proved to be very weak. The mountain in labor has once 
more given birth to a ridiculous mouse. This sermon in particular 
is intrinsically a small affair. Still it merits attention. It is not 
beneath, notice, like too much from the pen of the same author in 
the Protestant Quarterly , by its gross vulgarity and rant. There is 
some decency in its style, some dignity in its tone. And then it has 
significance by its relations and accidents ; as the end historically 
of much that has gone before; as a curious exemplification theolog- 
ically of the intellectual obliquity and wrong spirit of the whole re- 
ligious tendency which it may, in some sense, be said to represent. 
Altogether, we say, the sermon is not undeserving of regard. 



Chap. XXXIII] dr. berg's last words 403 

" His going out of the body is to be no vulgar transition simply 
from one sect to another. It must be a solemn Exodus; a sort of 
a miniature repetition of the scene which took place, when the Free 
Church of Scotland went forth from the Establishment with the 
great Chalmers at its head. It must be for conscience sake. It 
must carry with it the air of a great and heroic sacrifice for the 
cause of righteousness and truth. — We almost wonder that he was 
not led to set up a fresh sect, or to try, at least, the experiment of 
a schism in the Reformed Church, to be baptized with his name. 
But, ' non omnia possumus omnes.' A captaincy in such a case, 
without even a corporal's guard to follow, is rather a sorry business. 
— It was wise then not to venture a new church, but to take refuge 
rather in the 'Old Church of Holland, the Gibraltar of Protestant- 
ism,' already well known and firmly established. Still the move- 
ment must not forfeit, for this reason, the character of a true seces- 
sion, a veritable heroism for faith, in the eyes of an admiring world. 
It is pleasant to be a martyr, or at any rate to have the name of 
one, if it come not to bona fide blood, and cost nothing either to 
stomach or blood. The object then of this Valedictoiy is to make 
good a title to such luxury and praise. 

"Thus he expresses himself: 'I feel that my position is painful, 
but I am sure in my own mind that it is right. I cannot operate 
with the Synod of the German Reformed Church any longer. Its 
late action is a practical avowal of sympathy with views which I 
cannot endure, and subsequent developments have satisfied me that 
my mission in its communion is finished.' — All this is designed to 
be a sort of modest parallelism with the relation of Elijah to Israel, 
in the days of Ahab and Queen Jezebel. The Reformed Church 
answers to the Ten Tribes, gone or fast going after Baal. Dr. Berg 
is the solitary Tishbite under the juniper tree. 

" We are charged with teaching, ' that sin was in the person of 
the Mediator, and that the presence of sin in His person entailed 
the necessity of His suffering,' because of our saying that the hu- 
man nature which He assumed was that of Adam after the fall, and 
so a ' fallen humanity,' which was to be raised through this very 
mystery of the Incarnation itself to a new and higher order of life. 
To this most abominable misrepresentation, another breach of the 
ninth commandment, we reply in merciful Latin: ' Mentiris impu- 
dentissime.' We abhor every such thought. It is not in our book. 
We have always disowned it." — This was the language of contro- 
versy, and as Dr. Berg was accustomed to use the weapons of 
satire and sarcasm very freely himself at times, he could not com- 



404 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

plain when shells of this kind fell thick and fast around him. Most 
probably he admired the skill with which they were hurled. He, 
at least, never evinced any low resentment or secret hatred towards 
his great opponent, nor charged him with disingenuous motives; 
on the contrary he always spoke of him in terms of sincere respect- 
In the course of time he became professor of Dogmatic Theology in 
the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church, at New 
Brunswick, N. J., and it is said based his lectures largely on 
Ebrard's Christliche Dogmatik, which was substantial^ the same 
theology as that which had been taught all along at Mercersburg. 

As already said, the Rev. Jacob Helfenstein had likewise seceded 
from the Reformed Church, and, with a larger part of his congre- 
gation, had gone into the Presbj'terian Church. Born in the Re- 
formed Church, with an honorable ancestry of ministers, he, at an 
early age, had left it, became an ardent disciple of Mr. Finney, and 
then returned to it with an earnest desire apparently to build up 
its broken-down walls with the new light which he thought he had 
received from Oberlin, in the Western Reserve, Ohio. He had a 
few ministerial friends who sympathized with him, and thought 
they were called to perform the part of reformers in their da} T by 
introducing a foreign spirit into the Church. Having been brought 
to see that he had no occupation for a work of that kind in his 
own Church, he again withdrew, not however without first address- 
ing a circular to the various religious papers, urging them to de- 
nounce what he considered dangerous heresy, making its appear- 
ance in the Reformed Church. Some of them heeded his alarm, 
but some of them did not, deeming it most proper for them to 
attend to their own vineyards. Dr. Berg at first discouraged se- 
cession, but the pressure from without, as he said, even on the 
streets of Philadelphia, was great, and he succumbed to what was 
a considerable ecclesiastical c} T clone at the time. The editor of the 
Christian Intelligencer, not exactly the organ but the leading pa- 
per of the Reformed Dutch Church, especialty, gave him aid and 
comfort in his various conflicts with his German brethren. 

In the year 1852 the corresponding delegates of the Dutch Re- 
formed Church, who had attended the meeting of the German Re- 
formed Synod the year before, made a very unusual report — sui gen- 
eris — of what they had seen and heard among their German cousins. 
Usually such reports were of a friendly and pleasant character, 
giving an account of the progress of the sister Church with its 
Christian greetings ; but at this time, and for once, the report was 
of a decidedly warlike character, and the Dutch Synod deemed itself 



Chap. XXXIIIJ dr. berg's coadjutors 405 

called on to define its position as in no sense endorsing what had 
come to be called " Mercersburg Theolog}^," or, in other words, the 
doctrinal views of the two Reformed Professors at Mercersburg. 
They had never been asked to do so, and the German brethren 
themselves had not done so in any formal way — simply protected 
them when unjustly assailed; but the Dutch brethren thought 
otherwise and supposed that it was incumbent on them to express an 
opinion in regard to the questions in dispute in the sister church. 

This report of the Dutch delegates was allowed to be put on 
record on the minutes of their Synod, a copy of which was forwarded 
next year, according to the usual rule, to the other Reformed Church, 
which met in Baltimore in the year 1853. This document, of a very 
remarkable character, was placed in the hands of a special commit- 
tee that gave it a careful and searching examination. The result 
was that the committee reported that their report did not harmonize 
with the facts in a number of instances, and the chairman, who was 
a vigorous German, did not think it was necessary that he should 
employ Calvin's merciful Latin in his report, as Dr. Nevin had done 
in the case of Dr. Berg; but simpty said in plain Anglo-Saxon that 
all their statements were untrue, except that their stay with their 
German brethren was brief, which did not allow them sufficient time 
to secure more accurate information. The relation between the two 
ecclesiastical bodies, previous to this of a most intimate and affec- 
tionate character, thus became strained for several years. It re- 
sulted largely from the fact that the meaning of the object in the 
exchange of corresponding delegates was not property understood 
at the time. Subsequently, when this came to be better defined, 
the old, fraternal feeling asserted itself and again began to grow. 

Dr. Berg found a few other coadjutors and sympathizers in the 
Reformed Dutch Church. In the January number of the Princeton 
Repertory, in 1852, a long article on "Ursinus and the Heidelberg 
Catechism " made its appearance from the pen of Rev. John W. 
Proudfit, one of the Professors in Rutger's College, New Jersey. 
Professedty it was a review of the translation of the Commentary 
of Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism by the Rev. George W. 
Williard, Avhich he criticised very unfavorably; but the article 
seemed to ha\^e been intended more particularly for the benefit of 
Dr. Nevin, who, at the request of the translator, had prepared an In- 
troduction for the book of moderate dimension on the life of its 
author, Ursinus. In connection with this biography, he took occa- 
sion to speak of the excellent spirit of the Catechism, of its irenical 
character, and of its reserve on the subject of the divine decrees as he 



406 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

had done elsewhere. To much of this Dr. Proudfit objected, as well 
as to other productions of Dr. Nevin's pen, which he brought in by the 
wa}^, such as his History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism, in 
connection with his articles on Early Christianity. Evidently it was 
not so much Mr. Williard's book as Dr. Nevin with whom he wished 
to have a tilt. His wish was gratified, and his article answered in 
Dr. JSTevin's usualty vigorous, and at this time rather caustic style, in 
the March number of the Mercer sburg Review for the year 1852, 
in an article entitled the "Heidelberg Catechism." 

" It only remains," says Dr. Nevin, " to notice briefly the criticism 
b} T Dr. Proudfit on Williard's translation itself. We have had no 
opportunity to compare this with the original text, and can there- 
fore say nothing positively as to the ability and fidelity with which 
it is executed. But it is easy to see from the face of such evidence 
as we have before us, that the general criticism of the Brunswick 
Professor is exceedingly unfair. He affects to call in question the 
worth and sufficiency of Mr. Williard's Latin text, the Geneva edi- 
tion of 1616, without any good reason whatever. He takes the 
translator solemnly to task, at the same time, for venturing out of 
his copy, to bring in short extracts from the old English Transla- 
tion by Parry, although these extracts are carefully noted in the 
text itself as addenda, with due warning besides in the Preface. — 
But now only hear Professor Proudfit on this point : 'In this prac- 
tice, we must remind him that he has departed from all the just 
principles which ought to guide a translator. We cannot well con- 
ceive a larger ' liberty ' than for a translator to insert short ex- 
tracts from unknown sources, changing the style and construction 
so as to adapt it to the taste of the modern reader.' The word 
taste, italicised to convey the entirely and perfectly gratuitous as- 
sumption, that the case may include some theological accommoda- 
tion, instead of the fashion of language, the actual 'foisting in' 
of a new sense with sinister purpose and regard, is miserable bal- 
derdash. 

"But there are instances, not a few, of bad translations in the 
book, according to the critic. We can only say, not having the 
original at hand, that the book does not read like a bad translation ; 
on the contrary it runs very clearly and very smoothly, more so 
than translations do commonly, and makes, at all events, good 
sense. — All we wish to say is, that Dr. Proudfit's criticism here is 
chargeable with gross exaggeration. 

" So as regards the typographical and general editorial execution 
of the work. It is declared to be unpardonably negligent and in- 



Chap. XXXIII] dr. berg's coadjutors 407 

accurate. This accusation, at least, we feel at liberty bluntly to 
contradict. T3^pographical errors ma}^ indeed be found ; but they 
certainly need some hunting. They are not at once patent. Then 
as for the general style of the book, it may easily be left to speak 
for itself, as it has already in truth won in its own favor, on all 
sides, the highest commendation and praise. Seldom do we meet 
with a work of like size, for popular use, in the case of which the 
outward costume, both of paper and type, is less open to any fair 
reproach. 

" It is plain enough after all, however, that the criticism of Mr. 
Williard's work forms but a small part of the real object of Dr. 
Proudfit's article. The main purpose is to assault the Mordecai 
sitting at the gate, our Introduction, namely, on the life and char- 
acter of Ursinus. In what spirit, and with what sort of effect, this 
has been clone, we have now tried, in some measure, to make appar- 
ent. The article is sufficiently ostentatious and ambitious ; it is 
ushered in with quite an historical dissertation on the subject of 
catechetical instruction, abounds in sophomorical scraps of Latin 
(the author being Professor of the dead languages), and makes a 
wonderful parade throughout of doing up the work in a smashing, 
wholesale way. But in all this there is a great deal more show 
than substance. The historical introduction is but little to the 
point ; the sophomorical scraps of Latin prove nothing ; and what 
affects to be smashing argument resolves itself, on near inspection, 
into empty smoke or something worse. The argument consists, 
for the most part, in creating false issues, by pushing qualified 
statements to an extreme sense ; by exaggerating and caricaturing 
points of controversy ; in one word, by setting up men of straw, 
over whom an easy victory is gained, the weight of which is then 
pompously employed to crush what has been thus misrepresented 
and abused." 

In conclusion, Dr. Nevin, willing to compromise with his New 
Brunswick critic, says : "It would be a pity if the present Intro- 
duction to Mr. Williard's book merely should stand in the way of 
its being favorably received in the Reformed Dutch Church, as Dr. 
Proudfit seems to think it should and must do. We beg leave 
therefore to suggest a simple remedy for the evil. Let another be 
drawn up, either by Dr. Proudfit himself or by somebody else, 
calculated for the meridian of New Brunswick, and conformed, in all 
respects, theologically to the reigning Puritan standard of the 
time. Let it roundly affirm, that on the subject of the decrees the 
formal teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism falls not a whit be- 



408 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

hind the determinations of the Synod of Dort ; that it owns no 
.sympathy whatever with the Catholic ideas of the Ancient Church; 
that it eschews religioushr the whole mystical interest in religion, 
and moves only in the sphere of the logical understanding ; that it 
has in it no inward relationship with Lntheranism ; that the true 
key to its sense and spirit should be sought rather in Xew England 
Puritanism ; that it is unchurchly and unsacramental throughout ; 
and that it acknowledges no objective grace, uo mysteiy at all (just 
as little, be it whispered, as Art. XXX Y of the Belgic Confession) 
in the holy sacraments, on a full par thus with the universal secta- 
rian rationalism of the day. Let this be the stand-point, we say, 
of the new Introduction, got up for the special use and benefit of 
the Reformed Dutch Church; and if the Dutch Church generally 
should choose to be satisfied with it, the world at large, we pre- 
sume, will not feel it necessaiy to make any objection." 

In the 3 T ear 1854 the New Brunswick Bevieic was started under 
the editorship of Dr. Proudfit. It was expected to be in some sense 
the literary organ of the Dutch Church and it presented a respect- 
able appearance; but in one way or another it was not properly en- 
couraged, and in a year or two it was discontinued. It appeared 
to receive its main inspiration as an uncompromising opponent of 
the teachings of the Mercersburg Professors. In the first year it 
contained two very length}' articles from Professor Proudfit, which 
attacked Dr. Schaff as a church historian and criticised very un- 
favorably his Principle of Protestantism, his Histoiy of the Apos- 
tolic Church and other writings, without, however, doing them any 
serious harm. The conclusion arrived at by the writer was that 
the " positions which Professor Schaff had already advanced were 
such as to kvv the whole truth and the grace of God, and the whole 
liberty, hope, and salvation of the human race, at the feet of the 
Papacy." Thus the last article against the Mercersburg heresy 
came to its climax, in language which, of itself, showed that the 
writer had all along been pursuing an illusion of his own brain. 

It was a matter of deep regret among the members of the German 
Church that the brethren in the Dutch Church were becoming es- 
tranged from them, and the}' naturally looked for some one to give a 
statement of the facts in the case. Dr. Xevin, therefore, published 
an article in the January number of the Mercersburg Review for the 
year 1854, entitled the "Dutch Crusade," giving an historical ac- 
count of the late unpleasantness that had sprung up between 
brethren of the same Reformed faith, which would have been amusing, 
if it had not been of such a serious character. Perhaps the denomi- 



Chap. XXXIII] dr. berg's coadjutors 409 

nation applied to the "crusade" was not strictly correct. Neither 
the editor of the Christian Intelligencer, Dr. Porter, nor the Bruns- 
wick Professor had the honor of bearing a Dutch name, and it may 
be inferred that their family training had been more Puritanic than 
truly Dutch. The Professor himself was of Seceder descent, as 
one might suppose even from his writings. Both were in full sym- 
pathy with Puritanic ways of thinking, and occupying posts of in- 
fluence they became representative opponents of the Anti-Puritan 
movement in the German Church. It was natural that with their 
Irish blood they should, vi et armis, uphold their Puritan faith and 
try to suppress the supposed Mercersburg heresy. But were they 
the proper persons to represent the dignity and learning of the old 
Dutch Church, its orthodoxy and churchliness? Certainly not. 
This was something for which the}^ lacked the necessary qualifica- 
tions. Professor Taylor Lewis, one of her brightest ornaments, 
or some one of the Van Dykes, could have performed this service 
much better. — It should, however, be remarked that the friction 
between the two churches, which seemed to be at the time such a 
terrible disaster, turned out in the end to be, if not a mere ripple, 
a matter of no very serious consequence. The two classes of peo- 
ple, the Dutch and German, knew each other, knew how closely 
they were related to each other in their past history, and they did 
not allow theological points to rend asunder ancient and hallowed 
ties. A better spirit came to prevail, and at present the two de- 
nominations, as a general thing, stand in more friendly relations 
than they probably ever did before. 



26 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

IX the German Reformed Church, as may be supposed, for a num- 
ber of years there was a continuous theological excitement, espe- 
cially after the Mercer sburg Review made its appearance in 1849. 
The object in all of the discussions was in reality to define her posi- 
tion and to give her a solid and rational basis of unity. But as the 
centripetal force was intensified, the centrifugal and tangential in 
a variety of waj^s asserted itself. In such circumstances ardent 
minds are prone to run into extremes and oftentimes into opposite 
directions. As we have seen, several German Reformed ministers 
passed over into other denominations and carried their congrega- 
tions with them; but as history has its opposites, in the lapse of 
time the secessions were of a different character, and in this instance 
the} x took place from the Mercersburg school itself. Drawn into 
an opposite extreme, several young men, who were prominent advo- 
cates of Mercersburg doctrine, passed over into the Catholic Church 
and others followed them. They aimed to become leaders in the 
theological movement, in their own Church; but as it did not seem 
to advance rapidly enough for them, the}' fell out of rank, read 
Catholic authors almost exclusively, differed from their teachers, 
and in apparent sincerity, for the most part, yet in some sort of be- 
wilderment, they sought refuge in the Roman Church. None of 
them fully understood the true Evangelical faith nor the real animus 
of what the}' had been taught in the Seminary. They were in an 
earnest theological movement, but the} T were not of it, and their 
withdrawal from it, although it tended to cast reproach upon it for 
a time, did in fact benefit it, serving as a lesson to others that truth 
is never found in extremes, but as Aristotle sa} T s, always between 
the two. 

Some of the opponents of Dr. Nevin alleged that he himself was 
on the way to Rome, and fears were entertained by some of his 
friends that he too, troubled and perplexed by the Church Question, 
might lose his balance, and seek rest in a system where all questions 
are settled by papal authority. But such an alternative was a moral 
impossibility for a man of his vigorous intellectual and spiritual 
constitution. He was free during his entire life-time to change his 
views of men and things as he gained more light and knowledge, but 
he never changed his philosophical principles. These led him, as 

(410) 



Chap. XXXIV] Romanizing tendencies 411 

we have seen in his controversy with Dr. Brownson, to deny that 
the Roman system, in its inward weakness, could answer the great 
question of the age, whatever it may have accomplished in past 
ages. Both logic, and philosophy, and Scripture too as understood 
by Dr. Nevin, were here an insuperable difficulty in the way of a tran- 
sition such as was made by Newman. It would have falsified his 
most cherished convictions of truth, completely unmanned him and 
changed his entire make-up. We are aware that others at the time, 
strong in intellect and learning, fell back upon the Latin Church as 
their last resort, and so Dr. Nevin, in certain circumstances, or 
from sheer desperation, might have also done. Had the Church, 
for instance, in which he stood, adopted pseudo-protestant princi- 
ples, or had she failed to give him her sympathy or denied him lib- 
erty of speech or pen, then possibly with no apparent mission at 
home, he might, in despair and no longer himself, have been flung into 
an alien region as his onty place of refuge. But when he was out 
in deep waters, he paid no attention to the phantom ship of St. 
Peter, and, with his strong mind, continued to look up to Christ, 
who took him by the hand and kept him in the vessel of the Holy 
Catholic Church, to which he properly belonged. 

In this connection we furnish the reader an admirable descrip- 
tion of Dr. Nevin and his status during the latter part of his life 
at Mercersburg by his colleague in the Seminary, with whom he 
had passed through many sharp conflicts. When Dr. Schaff was 
in Germany in the year 1854, he was requested, by several mission- 
ary organizations at Berlin, to lecture on America, its political, 
social and religious condition, and out of these lectures grew a 
volume of 218 pages on America, which was published at Berlin 
in the same ye&v. In speaking of the German Churches in Amer- 
ica, he devoted a chapter to Dr. Nevin and his work in the Reformed 
Church, of which we here give a free translation, with the permis- 
sion of the author. 

Dr. John W. Nevin, until quite recently Professor of Theology 
and President of Marshall College, presents the rare example of a 
remarkable union of German and Anglo-German culture. He is a 
profound scholar, an independent thinker, an uncommonly earnest 
character, a homo gravis, as indeed his dignified external appear- 
ance would indicate. 

An American and rigid Presbyterian by birth and education, and 
for ten years a Professor in the Presbyterian Seminary at Allegheny, 
Pa., he imbibed from Neander a new idea of Church Histoiy, which 




412 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

affected his whole theology. In his mature manhood hy the lead- 
ing of Providence he was called into the service of the German 
Reformed Church, identified himself with its history, and studied 
the leading phases of modern German philosoplry and theology, 
among others also Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Daub, Schleiermacher 
and Rothe, without attaching himself slavishly to smy particular 
system. Such study emancipated him from the fetters of Puritan- 
ism, but it did not lead him into the path of scepticism or a lax 
theolog3 T , where many others have landed. It gave him a decidedly 
church tendency; which caused him to look back longingly into 
the past, into the age of the fathers, confessors and martyrs, and 
partly forward towards the ideal Church of the Future./jfr^/ 

The "Mystical Presence,' 1 published in 1846, was his^ifirst dog- 
matic-polemic work, a Vindication of the Mystical Presence of 
Christ in the Lord's Supper, and of the actual participation of be- 
lievers in the power of His divine-human life, in opposition to the 
prevalent symbolical view in America, which sees in this sacrament 
onl}- a commemoration of the death of Christ now absent in heav en. 
The theory of this book is substantially the Calvinistic or ortho- 
dox view, inasmuch as it advocates not a carnal real presence and 
oral manducation, but a spiritual real presence and participation, 
mediated through faith, and therefore rejects transubstautiation, 
and the Lutheran theory of consubstantiation so called, the in and 
sub, although not the cum pane et vino. At the same time, how- 
ever, it is a scientific statement and profound enlargement of the 
view of the Geneva Reformer, and holds up emphatically the ob- 
jective and nr^stical side of the sacred transaction ; and is directed 
not onlr against the Romish, but also against its opposite ration- 
alistic extreme. 

Calvin lays the greatest stress upon the subjective act of the 
soul, which is raised to heaven, where it is nourished in an inexpli- 
cable wa} T by the power of the Holy Ghost with the vis vivified of 
the caro Christi : with Dr. Nevin Christ is present in the sacra- 
mental transaction, as the whole, undivided divine human Christ 
in his generic nature as the Second Adam, and the life-fountain of 
the entire new creation, as the head of the Church. His body, the 
fulness of Him that filleth all in all, invisible and spiritual of course, 
but, nevertheless, real and substantial. As such He is presented 
to believers as spiritual food, in order to strengthen their life-com- 
munion with Him alreacl}^ existing, so that He, as St. Paul and the 
Heidelberg Catechism express themselves so strongly, becomes 
more and more "flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone." 



Chap. XXXIY] an estimate of dr. nevin 413 

This view was decried on all sides, even by so-called Lutheran 
organs, as materialistic, mystical, pantheistic, Puseyistic, papistic 
and so on, but successfully defended by its author with overwhelm- 
ing learning and philosophic depth. Here he had the great advan- 
tage that he had on his side substantially the most important sym- 
bols of the Reformed Church, which nearly all sprung up under 
Calvin's influence; especially the Heidelberg Catechism and the 
writings of Zach'arias Ursinus ; also most of the evangelical theolo- 
gians of Germany on the more vital points, namely, in the recogni- 
tion of an objective, mystical element in the Eucharist, in opposi- 
tion to the one-sided, exclusively subjective and commemorative 
Zwinglian view. If Dr. Nevin, in his churchly and mystical ten- 
dency, went beyond the boundary line of the old Reformed concep- 
tion, modern Puritanism and Presbyterianism — not to speak of 
American Lutheranism — certainty went much farther in the direc- 
tion of the Socinian and rationalistic theory of the sacraments. 

In general, he is entitled to the undisputed merit of having 
brought the theology of the Reformation period, which is much 
deeper, more spiritual and churchly than that of modern Puritan- 
ism, in a living reproduction, home to the consciousness of the Ger- 
man American Churches. That may be seen in his tractate on the 
"Anxious Bench;" still more so in the " Mistical Presence " and *■ 
its defence against the attacks of Dr. Hodge; and in his excellent ^- 
small treatise on the Heidelberg Catechism, anno 1847. The im- 
mediate result then was that in a wider circle the literature of the 
Reformation period was more zealously studied; that catechetical 
instruction, which with confirmation had to a certain extent been 
set aside by Methodistic influences, as mere formalism and mechan- 
ism, was reinstated; and the bond of S3^mpathy with modern Ger- 
man theology, which had formerly been so much despised in America, 
was restored. 

But the movement did not here stop. Already in the Mystical 
Presence, the idea of the Incarnation of Christ came to the front 
very clearly, as the central truth of Christianity. With this came 
also necessarily a deeper comprehension of the Church as the con- 
tinuation of this fact; as an unbroken succession of the divine- 
human life of Christ in the history of humanity, with the attributes 
of unity, catholicity, holiness, apostolicity, infallibility, and inde- 
structibility.* 

With this idea the present divided condition of Protestantism, 
especially in America, the classic lands of sects, seemed to stand 
opposed. Accordingly Dr. Nevin unsparingly attacked the entire 



414 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

American Sect-system and the arbitrary, subjective, unhistorical, 
selfish, partisan, persecuting Sect-spirit in his remarkable work on 
Antichrist, in 1847, as the Anti-Christianity of modern Protestant- 
ism, in direct opposition to the general opinion, which confines 
Antichrist to the papacy and makes the two identical ; and he more- 
over draws a parallel between it and ancient Gnosticism, whose 
fundamental error likewise consisted in the denial of the mystery of 
the Incarnation, and of an objective, historical Christianity. 

At the same time his interest in history, which had driven him 
back to the Reformation period, led him further back to a more 
thorough study of patristic theolog}^, and there he saw more clearlv 
the difference, in form at least, between it and Modern Protestant 
Christianity, especially Puritanism, partly through his own inde- 
pendent study of the works of Augustine, Cyprian, Tertullian, 
Irenaeus and so on; and partly through the help of modern works, 
such as " Rothe's Beginnings of the Christian Church," and Isaac 
Taylor's "Ancient Christianity." 

In thlT same track with the more recent German theology, he a 
studied with the deepest interest the entire Puseyite controversy/ 
foremost the writings of Dr. John H. Newman, with whom he had 
many points of resemblance, and read the works of the most im- 
portant Roman Catholic apologists and polemics, such as Bellar- 
min, Bossuet, Moehler, Wiseman and Balmes, who of course repre- 
sent their system of faith in a much more favorable light than their 
Protestant opponents, and know how to idealize it, so that to a 
deep, earnest spirit it becomes powerfully imposing. 

Dr. Nevin gave expression to his newly gained ideas in the Mer- 
cersburg Review, established \)y his pupils, edited by him, and read 
extensively beyond the Reformed Church, more particularly in the 
Episcopal. He there developed, in a series of essays and reviews, 
full of life and spirit, always going back toJ^ndamenf.al pijnciples^ 
the doctrine of the Person of Christ; of the nature and attributes 
of the Church, His mystical Body; of the Sacraments; of the the- 
ology of the Apostolic Symbol; the difference between patristic 
and American Christianity ; the Relation of Freedom to Authorit}' ; 
of Faith to Knowledge; of Christianity to Civilization; and in 
short the deepest questions of the age, in which with rare polemic 
ability and dexterity, he attacked popular errors, more particularly, 
religious and political radicalism, and the materialistic tendency of 
the times. 

He reproduced and lived over again the entire controversy be- 
tween Romanism and Protestantism, and threw light upon it from 




Chap. XXXIV] an estimate of dr. nevin 415 

new points of view, with constant reference to the ruling American 
Church relations and the prevailing Puritanic system. All the con- 
troversies between the different Protestant bodies, the differences 
between Lutheranism and Reform, Calvinism and Arminianism, 
Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, and so on, appear to him always 
more as secondary matters as compared with the colossal antithesis 
of Romanism and Protestantism, which has its centre-focus in the 
doctrine of the Church, in the relation of the supernatural to the 
natural. He, therefore, came more and more to the conviction that 
the latter could not be defended by a regardless rejection of the 
first, but only as a transition state to a higher and better one, and 
that the contest against Rome can then become effectual only as 
Protestantism itself seeks to bring about its own regeneration. 

" All this is with him no mere speculation but the most serious 
life question. In this respect he is a genuine American, as he looks 
at everything from a practical point of view, whilst a German is 
easily satisfied with ideas and theories. For him the Church Ques- 
tion, in its widest extent, is not only the greatest theological prob- 
lem of the present, but, at the same time, one of personal salvation. 

To this must be added, that somewhat inclined, we might say, to 
asceticism and monasticism, he has an overwhelming sense of the 
hollowness and indescribable vanity of the world, and of all mere 
natural life, even of learning and science, and so, also, of the abso- 
lute necessity of supernatural light and grace. Although a specu- 
lative thinker, he is fully penetrated with the conviction that mere 
speculation leads only to doubt and despair ; that every one must 
enter the kingdom of heaven as a little child ; and submit himself 
absolutely to an infallible divine authority, in order to arrive at a 
saving knowledge of the truth. 

The more the idea of the supernatural, as something specifically 
different from the natural, and yet entering it as the real present 
power of God ; the more that the meaning of the mystery of the 
Incarnation of God and of one Holy, Catholic Church, in the sense 
of the apostolic and post-apostolic symbols, took possession of his 
mind : just so much the more grew in him with this knowledge a 
corresponding sorrow over the numberless difficulties which sur- 
round modern Protestantism, especially in America, but in Europe 
also, where, in some respects, it is still worse. — These difficulties, 
of all sorts, gathering around his mind, as so mairv dark, gloomy 
pictures, pursue him late and early, and have almost crushed him. 
Thus Dr. Nevin is the peculiar embodiment of the Church's trouble 
(Kirchenschmerz), which has penetrated many of the most earnest 



416 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

spirits of the age. I do not believe that any theologian, either of 
the old or new world, feels it more keenly, or prays over it more 
zealously, than he. 

Under these circumstances not only his opponent but also some 
of the friends of Dr. Nevin have entertained the fear that he might 
submit to the claims of Rome, and there find rest for his troubled 
spirit. That would be an act of martyrdom, for which he has the 
moral courage and self-denial ; but, although he is just the man to 
sacrifice every thing to his religious convictions, and although 
Puritanism drove him to a more favorable view of the Church of 
Rome, nevertheless on the other hand, he understands full well its 
weaknesses, and has exposed them beyond refutation, as it seems to 
me. in two articles against Brownson, the celebrated convert, of Bos- 
ton. He showed, for instance, that the system of mere authority and 
blind subjection, as required by Rome, is in conflict with the entire 
constitution of man as formed for freedom, and with the idea of per- 
sonality and the course of historj^. Notwithstanding the strong 
language, which he used in those articles regarded as most Romaniz- 
ing, he leaves the way of escape open in the theorj T of historical devel- 
opment, which makes room for Protestantism, as one form of Chris- 
tianity, although one-sided and transitional, to a much better age 
and a higher union of what is good in both Protestantism and 
Romanism. His entire philosophical S3 r stem and his conception 
of history rest altogether on an evangelical Protestant basis and 
proceeds all along on the necessity of a reconciliation of authority 
and freedom, of objectivity and subjectivitj', as the prospectus of 
the Mercer sburg Review from the start expressed itself. 

In this theological movement, the German Reformed Church, in 
whose bosom it sprung up, has been very much misunderstood, 
made responsible for the so-called "Mercersburg Theology," and 
bitterly persecuted and slandered ; but she has not adopted or sanc- 
tioned any of Dr. Kevin's peculiar views; she has simply refused, 
at the beck of a fanatical and intolerant party, to condemn them as 
heretical, and is willing that the Church Question, which rests with 
a heavy weight upon the present age, should be discussed earnestly 
and under all its aspects, for which a certain measure of freedom is 
indispensable. 

Dr. Nevin has thus far in every instance gained the victory over 
his opponents, and that not by intrigue, but in the most open and 
honorable way, b}^ his writings and off-hand speeches, in which, dis- 
missing all rhetorical ornament and without aiming at effect, he 
operated only through the power of thought, presenting whilst 



Chap. XXXI Y] an estimate of dr. nevin 41? 

speaking the appearance of a marble statue, showing the powerful 
inward nature only now and then by the trembling movement of 
his lips. Yer}r property the Synod has always held his talents and 
his moral religious character in great respect, and it will continue 
to hold in grateful remembrance his conscientious and unselfish 
labors of twelve years in the service of her literary institutions at 
Mercersburg. 

The Synod, of which we speak, holds fast as truly and firmly as 
ever to her honored confession, which Dr. Nevin in many of his 
writings has explained, defended, and recommended to be more dili- 
gently used in Church and School, and she will never give it up 
until God Himself, by some new and positive creation in the depart- 
ment of doctrinal development, shall render the old symbol super- 
fluous. 

The only thing, which to many may appear suspicious, is the cir- 
cumstance that she has made the necessary arrangements for the 
formation of a new Liturgy, which will do full justice to the liturgical 
element in div'ne worship, as the act of the entire congregation, 
and make more use of the hallowed prayers and formulas of the 
ancient Catholic Church than has been the case hitherto in most 
Reformed Churches. To this, however, no objection can be made 
as a Romanizing tendency, because a similar movement to remodel 
and enrich divine worship is confessedly going forward in the whole 
Evangelical Church of Germany and Switzerland, which has always 
recognized the liturgical principle, more or less, and acknowledged 
its value. The Reformed Synod confidently falls in with this 
movement, fully assured that it does not lead to Romanism but to 
the regeneration of Protestantism, and wishes to contribute her 
mite to prepare the way for the period of the true Universal, Evan- 
gelical Church, enriched with all the treasures of truth gathered up 
by eighteen Christian centuries. She has the consciousness that 
the many difficulties that encompass the Church of the present can- 
not be overcome truly and permanently by a return to a stand-point 
gained in the past, much less to the still greater difficulties of the 
papacy, but only by a progressive onward movement. This is the 
view not only of most of the theologians and pastors of the Re- 
formed Church in America, but also of the most prominent minds 
in Europe. Such a faith and such a hope certainly will not be 
brought to shame. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

DR. NEVIN entered upon his duties in the Seminary at the 
opening of the Summer Session of 1840, so noiselessly and 
unobtrusively, that some of the students scarcely knew what to 
make of him. His leisure hours he spent in physical exercise, or in 
conversation with Dr. Rauch, in which he alwa}^s gave as freely as 
he received. Dr. Ranch, his colleague in the Seminary, taught the 
branches that belonged to the department of Biblical Literature 
until his death, for less than one year, when the entire instruction of 
the Seminary devolved on Dr. Xevin, assisted only for a brief period 
by a Jewish Rabbi, who taught the classes in the Hebrew language. 
He thus continued to do the work, which at the present day occupies 
the time of three or four Professors, until the advent of Dr. Schaff 
in 1844, who relieved him of a part of his burden. In the circum- 
stances he was under the necessity of imparting instructions mainly 
by the help of text-books. From the year 1842 to 1845, when the 
writer was in the Seminary, each class studied and recited from 
Home's Introduction, Biblical History, with the use of Shuckford's 
and Prideaux's Connections, Hebrew Grammar and Bible, the Greek 
Testament, Jahn's Biblical Antiquities, Coleman's Christian Anti- 
quities, Dick's Theology, Mosheim's Church History, Ernesti's 
Hermeneutics, and Porter's Homiletics, with lectures on Pastoral 
Theology. 

If now it be asked, was not such a course of study inadequate 
and behind the times, we reply, that none of his students have ever 
thought so. The text-books were old, somewhat antiquated, called 
into requisition because they were the only ones to be had. But 
the teacher behind the book was a live professor, who understood 
their defects no less than their merits, always able aud ready to 
bring forth things new and old for the edification of his pupils. 
Sometimes Dick or Mosheim was forgotten in the class-room, as he 
proceeded in his remarks to give more elevated views of Church 
Histoiy, or more profound and orthodox theological views. In 
this way the Old was useful and served as the starting point of the 
Xew. His clear-cut questions, not so numerous as exhaustive, 
were, in themselves, an intellectual training. They formed a skilful 
analysis of the subject of the recitation, in which the ground, cause, 
effect, condition, or relations of things were to be clearly defined 

(418) 



Chap. XXXV] as professor in the seminary 419 

and distinguished, and his students could not infer the correct an- 
swer from the form of the question. — At first his remarks, in con- 
nection with the recitations in Dick's Theology, were brief, compre- 
hensive, or epigrammatic; but, in the course of time, the} 7 ^ became 
much more free and expansive until they formed a lecture that took, 
the place of the lesson assigned for the time. The students then, 
of their own accord, began to take notes which swelled at length 
into a volume of considerable size and formed in themselves an in- 
dependent treatise or hand-book of Theology, in which the doc- 
trines of the Reformed Church, as the live product of their past 
history, were set forth judiciously, and with singular care and cau- 
tion. Throughout they harmonize with the spirit of the Heidel- 
berg Catechism better than with the rigid school of Calvinism. He 
thus taught theology as his own theological views were developed 
and matured, until he resigned his chair in 1850. His Notes, left 
behind, if published, would be read with profit by Christians gen- 
erally, no less than by clergymen — as Nevinls Loci Communes. 

As in the College, so in the Seminar}^ more or less difficulty was 
experienced in paying the Professors' salaries. Efforts were made, 
from time to time, to remedy this difficult}-, but they gave only 
temporary relief and the financial spectre continued to face Dr. 
Nevin from year to year, until at length he came to the conclusion to 
resign the position in the Seminary, which he had held for over ten 
years. It is quite likely that a desire to be relieved of the respon- 
sibilities of a public office, and to gain leisure to discuss general 
theological questions, had its influence in inducing him to take this 
step ; but in his letter of resignation, he assigns increasing financial 
difficulties as the chief cause of his having intermitted his official 
duties in the Seminar}^ in 1850. "This step," he wrote in his letter 
to the Synod, "was taken under the feeling that something of the 
sort was necessary to engage proper attention to the critical 
position of the Institution, and with distinct reference to the pos- 
sibility of its being preparatory only to an act of full and final 
resignation ; since in the nature of the case it would not be proper 
for me to continue long in this state of voluntary suspense, in 
which I have thus been brought to stand. Something has been 
done since to place the Seminary in a better condition. But the 
way is by no means open for it still to go forward with vigor and 
comfort on the scale of its present organization. Much is still 
needed to complete its endowment and to clear it of debt. It is 
plain, too, that to make it of any suitable account, a new impulse 
must be given to the cause of beneficiary education among us, far 



420 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

beyond all that is thought of in this direction now. The Church 
is not prepared, as it seems to me, to cany out its present idea of 
a Theological Seminaiy with two professors in a truly earnest way ; 
and, if such be the case, it is better at once to reduce our views 
and efforts to the measure of this necessity. Let the Seminary 
proceed for a time with one Professor, and whatever of surplus 
means may be then available for its use, let thein be applied to pa}- 
off its debts, while at the same time all needful exertions are made 
to endow a second Professorship, and also to create a beneficiary 
fund for supplying it in part with students. Time may be had in 
this waj T for uniting hereafter in .some satisfactory choice, to fill 
the important and highly' responsible post which I now propose to 
leave vacant." 

"When the letter of the Professor was read at the S^mod of Lancas- 
ter in 1851, it was referred to the Committee on the Seminary. At 
first it seemed to be thought that, as the resignation was urgent, 
made in good faith, and after mature consideration, no other course 
was left for the Synod but to accept it with proper acknowledg- 
ment of the valuable services of the Professor during his term of 
office. But upon second thought, it was felt that it would be dis- 
creditable to the Church to lose the service of such a valuable ser- 
vant for onby an apparent want of means to give him adequate finan- 
cial support. Besides, it soon became apparent that, if the Synod 
should accept of the resignation without some kind of a protest, 
his opponents would make capital of it or misrepresent the standing 
of the Professor as well as the mind of the S3mod in regard to him. 
A few unfortunate utterances had made their appearance in the 
Weekly Messenger a short time before, and some of the members 
of the Synod were apprehensive that the public might regard them 
as the voice of the Church in regard to Dr. Xevin. The} T were, 
therefore, unwilling to make haste in cutting asunder the ties which 
had bound them for many years to an honored professor. The 
Committee on the State of the Seminaiy, of which Rev. S. X. Cal- 
lender was chairman, recommended in their report that Dr. Xevin 
be requested " to withdraw his resignation and resume service in 
the Seminaiy; and that, if he should insist upon his resignation, 
the Synod would yield to his request with great reluctance, and 
leave his professorship vacant, in the hope that in the providence 
of Grod he might see his way clear to return to the same at no dis- 
tant day, and with the expectation and decided wish for him to re- 
main in his present relation to the College in the meantime." The 
report led to discussion and elicited a considerable amount of feel- 



Chap. XXXV] final resignation 421 

ing. Dr. Schaff took an active part in it and eloquently defended 
the report. The result showed that the old opposition to the the- 
ological Professors remained the same as at York in 1845 ; and that 
in the meanwhile it had not gained any material strength. There 
were forty-two votes in favor of the resolution and four in the 
negative. , The Synod acted wisely and with due self-respect. Here 
again, by its vote, without concurring in all the theological posi- 
tions assumed by the Professors, it endorsed indirectly the general 
drift of their teaching, and expressed its confidence in the integrity 
and honesty of Dr. Nevin, that in the professorial chair, he would 
teach his students conscientiously the " old Reformed doctrine," as 
he had done faithfully during the previous years. 

Dr. Nevin was profoundly affected by the action of the Synod, 
and rising from his chair, the cynosure of all eyes, he made a most 
eloquent and feeling address to his assembled brethren. He thanked 
them for this expression of their confidence, and promised to take 
their request into consideration. He had not made up his mind to 
withdraw from the Seminar}^, because he thought he no longer 
enjoyed the confidence of the Church, but was moved thereto by 
considerations of altogether a different character. He believed 
firmly that the nineteen-twentieth part of the Church would vote for 
his remaining in his old position instead of the reverse, a playful 
remark for the benefit of the editor who did not mean all that his 
language implied, as he voted with the forty-two that Dr. Nevin 
should remain at his post. In conclusion, he assured the brethren 
that their affection for him was fully reciprocated, and with deep 
emotion said that he loved this Synod, in which he had been 
laboring for years, from the bottom of his heart. Language like this 
from one who seemed to have so much iron or granite in his consti- 
tution, coming from the heart went to the heart, and drew tears of 
reciprocal affection from many moistened e3 T e-lids. 

There was here much admiration for the great theologian, the 
philosopher, the writer, and the polemic, who had never allowed 
his opponent to carry off* any laurels from his brow on the battle- 
field ; but at this parting meeting on the floor of the Synod at Lan- 
caster there was likewise a deep admiration for the man, quite as 
much as for what he had ever said or done. It had before it a pro- 
fessor in whose integrity in the discharge of his duties as a teacher 
of theology the Church had full confidence ; or as one of the delegates 
said, one who possessed his full share of old Roman virtue ; and was 
in the language of the poet Horace 

Integer vitae scelerisque purus. 



422 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

At this same meeting of S}mod a communication from the Salem 
Reformed Church, in Philadelphia, was received, requesting the 
Sjmod to release Dr. Schaff from his connection with the Seminary, 
with a view to his accepting of a call from their congregation. 
The proceeding was allowed to take this course by Dr. Schaff so 
that there might be no financial difficulty in the way of Dr. Nevin's 
return to the Seminary, where his presence to him seemed to be a 
necessity But he had made up his mind fully to withdraw, and 
the S}^nod with wise foresight requested Dr. Schaff to remain at his 
post. The latter then became the sole professor untii an assistant 
could be called in, and Dr. Nevin, b}^ the urgent request of the old 
students, continued for some period of time to give private instruc- 
tions in Reformed theolog}^ as before. 

Immediately after the death of Dr. Rauch, the Trustees of Mar- 
shall College urged Dr. Nevin to accept of the Presidency in his 
place. The friends of the Institution generally wished it to be so, 
and a strong pressure from all quarters was brought to bear upon 
his mind to step in and fill up the vacancy. In the circumstances, 
the existence of the College seemed to be endangered, and all eyes 
were now turned towards Dr. Nevin as the man for the position. He, 
however, refused to accept of the appointment tendered to him in 
good faith, but agreed to take charge of Dr. Rauch's department, 
and discharge all its duties until the way was open for the perma- 
nent settlement of a new President. This promise was given un- 
der the impression that the Church would rally and at no distant 
day endow the Presidencj*. To facilitate a movement of this kind 
he agreed to give his services gratuitously. This he continued to 
do from year to year until the College was removed to Lancaster 
in 1853 ; because, the treasury was never in a condition to make 
an j different arrangements. In this way a young Institution, 
struggling for existence, was saved many thousand dollars, whilst 
it received new vigor from the strong arm of its President pro 
tempore. He became also President of its Board of Trustees, and 
by his wisdom and experience was of much service to that bod}-. 
Being informed by his friend, Rev. Bernard C. Wolff, of Easton, 
that Dr. Traill Green, of the same place, and for a time Professor 
in LaFayette College, could be secured to fill the department of 
Natural Science, dismissing for the time the appointment of a new 
President, he immediately secured his appointment, and the new 
Professor was on the ground by the opening of the summer term 
in 1841. He was a most valuable acquisition to the College. He 



Chap. XXXY] and as president of the college 423 

filled his department with ability and zeal, and in a short time 
communicated his enthusiasm for the natural sciences to the stu- 
dents generally. Previous to his advent those studies were, in a 
great measure, neglected for the want of a competent teacher ; now 
they took their place with other branches in the college curriculum. 
It was a new departure, full of hope to the College, which was 
still grieving over the death of its first President. In fact it helped 
materially in redeeming the loss in the minds of both students and 
professors. Professor William M. Nevin, a younger brother of 
Dr. Nevin, had been secured to take charge of the department of 
Belles-lettres and of the Ancient Languages, in the fall of 1840, 
who adorned his chair; Professor Samuel W. Budcl, who had been 
the colleague of Dr. Ranch in the High School at York, from the 
year 1833, and subsequently at Mercersburg, occupied with ability 
the chair of Mathematics and Astronomy; and tutors from the 
resident graduates were called in to assist in the instruction of the 
lower classes. The Faculty, according to the standard of that 
day, was full, and animated with the spirit of the new head and 
in harmony with him did a large amount of hard work, inspired 
with the belief that they were promoting a good cause, one that 
was to inure for ages, and labored together thankfully — ad majorem 
gloriam Dei. 

The friends of the institution rallied in a very short time not- 
withstanding their great loss, and it was gratifying to see the de- 
gree of hopefulness that sprung up under the new inspiration be- 
fore the close of the year. But in such cases there is often dan- 
ger of indiscretion in attempts to meet expectations that cannot al- 
ways be realized. As the Institution seemed to be starting out in 
a new career of success under a vigorous helmsman, in the course 
uf a year or two some of the progressive Trustees, resident in the 
village, thought there ought to be a new and showy building erected 
for the College. It was not actually needed, because the College 
students had been accommodated in the Seminary building with 
comfort and ease, and the same thing could be done without diffi- 
culty for years to come. But the proposition to build was carried 
under the impression that it would help to give fresh prestige to 
the College ; and an immense pile of brick was hauled on the ground 
for the new building, apparently enough to erect a second tower of 
Babel ; but when it was ascertained that it would be an expensive 
one, and that it could not be put up without incurring a heavy debt, 
Dr. Nevin insisted that the time had come to command a halt. It 
was well that he did so; but what was to be done with the brick? 



424 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

It was difficult to dispose of them, and exposed to the weather they 
were in danger of disintegrating into their mother clay. This was 
a prospect which caused many an anxious thought in the mind of the 
President of the Board during the storms of winter or whenever a 
shower came up in summer. 

But economy and good management prevailed in the end. A 
moderate building for the Preparatory Department and a modest 
Professor's house were erected and paid for. Still onl}- the smaller 
portion of the brick were utilized, and the balance remained more 
or less exposed to the weather. Better it would be to give them 
away than to let them waste awa} T ; but nobody needed them, and 
so they lay as a burden on Dr. Kevin's mind, when he had 
many other things to think about. But necessity was the mother 
of invention here as well as elsewhere. And so the sequel went to 
show. The Literary Societies, Diagnothian and Grcethean, con- 
nected with the College, were very active and enterprising in 
those days; and in the } T ear 1843 a few members of progressive 
tendencies in small parties began to discuss the question of erect- 
ing a hall for their use. The Societies at Princeton had such build- 
ings, and wh} T should those at Mercersburg not have the same ac 
commodations? The question was an interesting one, and not 
without some enchantment about it. 

At this point of time Dr. Xevin, hearing of such discussions 
and anxious to relieve his mind of some of its worry, without 
consulting with anybody, proposed one evening after prayers 
that the Societies should erect for themselves literary halls, and 
assured them that, if the} T did so, the College would supply them 
with brick gratis. The offer was accepted, and the class of 1843 
went to work to collect the necessaiy funds from their honoraiy 
members and others, to erect their separate halls on the College 
grounds. They were successful, and in due time they were con- 
secrated to literature and science. The corner-stone of the Grcethean 
Hall was laid on Goethe's birthday, August 28, 1844, and that 
of the Diagnothian Hall on the birthdaj^ of American independ- 
ence, July 4, 1845. The erection of these halls at Mercersburg 
was a feat of which the students were justlv proud, and spoke 
volumes for their training, energy, intelligence, and public spirit. 
In the circumstances of the College they were a necessity, and their 
usefulness was felt in its full extent after they were finished. 

Ample provision was thus made for the libraries, which now grew 
more rapidly than before, whilst abundant room was made for cab- 
inets of natural curiosities, the beginnings of which were soon made. 



Chap. XXXY] good management 425 

The main halls, where the Societies held their meetings, resembled 
Senate chambers on a small scale, and could not fail to inspire self- 
respect as well as stimulate the students to self-improvement in 
oratory, debate and composition. The style of the Halls was Gre- 
cian, pure and classic, with a portico supported by graceful columns 
in front, which gave them a literary appearance, like temples de- 
voted to the Muses. They arrested the attention of strangers at 
once as the chief ornament of the town. They were expected to 
stand like two fair daughters on either side of the large central 
College building, which, however, was never erected, and so they ap- 
peared only like two fair orphans. " It was not seemly," as Prof. 
W. M. Nevin remarked in his address at the laying of one of the 
corner-stones, "that the Literary Societies should remain secreted 
in the main building of a college edifice. They deserved to appear 
publicly in tasteful buildings of their own, like daughters, to say 
the least, on either side of their Alma Mater." 

A large portion of the immense pile of bricks on the College 
ground was thus turned to account in the erection of useful and 
necessaiy buildings ; but a large part of it remained without any 
mission, and the very sight of it plead for redemption to some 
higher use than their return to dust and ashes. That was accom- 
plished before the fingers of time had accomplished their decay. 
The old church, in which the students and Professors' families had 
been accustomed to worship with the Reformed congregation, had 
become dilapidated, and was ill adapted for commencements or 
other College purposes. It was at the end of the town, hard to get 
at, and repulsive enough in its external dismal appearance and in- 
ternal arrangements to suggest the idea of a prison or a barrack, 
rather than a place of devotion. It was in fact something of a re- 
flection on the Institutions themselves; and those concerned with 
them did not feel quite comfortable when distinguished strangers 
visited the place, and had to be taken to the old stone church to 
unite in their literary festivities. The congregation, however, was 
growing in grace with its healthy spiritual surroundings, and the 
good people were anxious to rise out of the dust and put on more 
beautiful garments. 

Accordingly, Dr. Nevin told them that if they would go for- 
ward and erect for themselves a new Church, the College would 
supply them with the bricks that would be needed, which it could 
easily do, as it had still a good supply on hand. The proposition 
was accepted, and Trinity Reformed Church was erected, in which 
the College was forever to have the right to hold its commence- 
21 



426 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

ments and other exercises. Thus all the weather-beaten bricks were 
consecrated to a sacred use, Dr.' Xevin's mind vastly relieved, and 
by his good management much needed buildings were put up that 
most likely would not have gone up at all, if it had not been for 
"somebody's folly" at Mercersburg. Blunders, like offences, it 
seems must needs come, but if sometimes the}' must, it is fortunate 
if there is some one at hand to turn them to account. It is the 
very essence of good house-keeping. The new church gave an im- 
pulse to the congregation: it grew and prospered under the cate- 
chetical system without any need of the '"Anxious Bench' 1 or its 
accompaniments to get it out of the "gall of bitterness." It stood 
in front of the Seminary building, and presented an appearance of 
which the students and professors had no occasion to be ashamed 
when strangers visited their classic retreat. 

This irruption of a great multitude of bricks upon College grounds 
taught Dr. Xevin a useful lesson. It was a fiasco that could not 
be repeated without danger of great harm. He had felt the neces- 
sity of an economical administration of the affairs of the College, 
but from this time onwards he insisted on it as an imperious neces- 
sity, and his word as a usual thing was law in such matters. The 
College went forward and prospered. It kept up a good appearance, 
and for efficiency, thorough training, and the culture that the grad- 
uates bore with them to their homes, it compared with the best in- 
stitutions of the kind in the country. Its commencements with the 
anniversaries of the Literary Societies were the events of the year 
for Mercersburg and a large range of country extending over into 
Maryland and Virginia, and round about in Pennsylvania. Many 
persons from a distance visited Mercersburg on its gala-days once 
or twice a year to enjoy its festivities — but some more particularly 
to see Dr. Xevin, Dr. SchafT and their colleagues. 

Back, however, of these pleasant features and appearances, was 
the financial question — the gaunt spectre, which the Faculty, the 
inner circle, had to contemplate from month to month. They were 
hard workers, usually performing more than their share of service, 
and the}' had a noble, generous head. who. renouncing all remunera- 
tion for his services, enabled them to draw their salaries on de- 
mand and to enjoy the comforts of life in a respectable and eco- 
nomical way. But this state of things could not continue forever. 
Even Samsonian shoulders will wear out in consequence of the 
wear and tear of time, and it is seldom that the}' can be replaced. 
Moreover the financial status did not improve : in truth, it grew 
worse, until the sad necessity loomed up that in the course of time 



Chap. XXXV] true education 42*7 

the College might have to be changed back again into a High 
School, in order to maintain its existence and do the work for 
which it was intended. In due season, however, Providence itself 
intervened in its behalf, as we shall see, and opened wide the door 
for its future success by its removal to Lancaster, Pa. 

In the College all the branches of a liberal education were suc- 
cessfully taught as in sister institutions, and in this respect it did 
not differ from them in any material respect. It did however differ 
considerably from its sisters in the predominance which it gave to 
the religious element in the process of education, together with its 
enthusiasm for the German language and German literature. Re- 
ligious training received an emphasis, not in words simply but in 
reality also, which from inadequate views of the subject it did not 
always receive in prominent schools of learning elsewhere. Various 
causes happily combined to bring about this order of things. The 
College was closely connected with the Theological Seminary ; both 
classes of students roomed together in the same building ; and the- 
ology was quite as prominent a theme of conversation as science, 
philosophy or gymnastics, — and rather more so. Dr. Ranch, the 
first President, was, as he aimed to be, a Christian philosopher, 
and in his lectures always endeavored to show the vital connection 
that should subsist between all true culture and Christianity. 

Dr. Nevin, in his responsible position, felt it to be incumbent on 
him to see that a truly Christian spirit should pervade the Institu- 
tions with which he stood connected. In addition to the usual re- 
ligious services, intended more particularly to promote this object 
in the Institution, he availed himself of opportunities in his class- 
room, especially in the department of Moral Philosophy, to imbue 
the minds of the students with reverence for divine revelation. 
The system of morals which he taught was substantially Ranch's 
Christian Ethics, which the author had left behind in manuscript 
notes. Here all true morality was made to take its rise in the di- 
vine law or will, irrespective of utility or merely human systems. 
Much interest in this study was excited in the minds of the stu- 
dents, and they were made to feel that philosophy or metaphysics 
was not to be taught mainly as so much mental training, but also 
for that higher end, which was moral and spiritual. This aspect of 
the subject arrested the attention even of thoughtless, worldly stu- 
dents, and salutary impressions were made on their minds that 
were never erased. 

Some of them were accustomed to say that the lectures were ser- 
mons, just as they regarded his sermons as lectures. Delivered 



428 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

during their last year in the College they were received, as they 
were intended to be, as the sublime finale of the college course. 
Some who entered college as sceptics had lost their infidelity by 
the time they came to graduate, and evinced a reverential regard 
for Christ and His divine person ; and some who had been vicious 
or immoral in their lives became members of the Christian Church 
in after life, evidently more or less under the influence of their 
college training. Few if any of the graduates left Mercersburg 
as infidels or unbelievers. 

Nevertheless colleges need discipline no less than good instruc- 
tions. Much may be accomplished in imbuing the minds of stu- 
dents with correct views of moralit}', and by holding up to their mind 
the ideal of purity and truth as exemplified in the character of 
Christ; but as in other families of a larger or smaller size, the}' need, 
at times, the application of the law and the use of the rod. At 
first there was an apprehension on the part of some of the students 
of Marshall College, and an expectation on the part of others, 
that Dr. Nevin would rule the college with rigor. He ruled him- 
self in that way, and as he was, apparently, an austere or hard man, 
it was naturally thought that the mild discipline of the College, 
hitherto prevalent, would be changed into something that would 
suit a bod}' of soldiers in their barracks. But severe as he was to- 
wards himself, it was soon ascertained that, whilst he was bound to 
enforce the laws and maintain order, he was mild, considerate, and 
a paterfamilias towards all alike, not disposed to make a mountain 
out of a molehill, nor to suppose that the existence of the institu- 
tion rested on a trifle. — He had scarcely entered upon his duties 
when several students were brought before the Faculty for some 
sort of misdemeanor, perhaps for swearing or lying. Fortunately 
they told the truth, acknowledging their error, which Dr. Nevin 
thought redounded to their credit. He accordingly gave them credit 
for this and dismissed them without any further formality, telling 
them to go and sin no more. From that time onwards he enjoyed 
the confidence of the students, moral and immoral. They con- 
fessed their faults, and he then gave them his fatherly counsel and 
advice. 

On one occasion, however, he had what he regarded as a hard 
case to manage. A student had become infatuated with his admira- 
tion for Lord I>3 T ron and his works. He wore a Byronic collar, and 
drank brand}', alleging that it was an inspiration to his favorite poet 
in writing some of his grandest poems — that it was the best stim- 
ulus in the development of genius — his own no doubt included. Va- 



Chap. XXXY] paternal discipline 429 

rious expedients had been empl<yyed by the Faculty to bring him to 
a reasonable mind, but they all seemed to be labor lost. There was 
something about his very appearance that was not regarded as al- 
together reassuring — something of the Corsair rather than the By- 
ronic or poetical. He called to see Dr. Nevin oue dark and stormy 
night in his study and wished to have a conversation with him. 
The Doctor gave him a seat as far from his own as possible, eyed 
him very closely, and was at a loss to know what to make of him. 
Under all the circumstances the thought occurred to him that he 
might have come with some sinister or evil intention, — to get satis- 
faction, perhaps, for some imaginary wrong. He made his object 
known at once by saying that he thought he ought to study for the 
ministry and had come to ask for counsel and advice. He was un- 
der the impression that his life was uncertain, and felt that he ought 
to redeem his time whilst his life lasted. He was evidently sincere, 
and he was encouraged to carry out his good purpose, as it seemed 
to be an inspiration from above. He subsequently studied theology, 
became a useful minister in the Reformed Church, then afterward 
in the Episcopal, and died in peace, whilst still comparatively 
young. — His name was Aaron Christman. 

On another occasion, the Faculty thought they had sufficient 
reason to exercise discipline in the case of a breezy Freshman, but 
they erred just as the Faculty of Yale College did a long time ago 
in the case of David Brainerd, the celebrated missionary among 
the Indians. They failed to hear both sides, but they did not sup- 
pose, like the ancient Faculty at New Haven, that their action was 
like the laws of the Medes and the Persians, that could not be 
changed. Brainerd was not restored to his place but the Freshman 
was. — We here give substantially the facts in the case as given us 
in a letter by the Freshman after he had grown up to be a dis- 
tinguished civilian. 

On a certain Monday morning he received a note, as he says, to 
appear before Dr. Nevin, and after he was introduced into his study 
he was at once informed that his connection with the College was 
ended ; that on the previous Saturday the Faculty had expelled 
him; and that he was required to leave the College and the town 
that same day. Not being conscious of any dereliction, except 
that he had been out of town on Sunday without permission, he 
made some remonstrances in an irritated manner, but was quickly 
interrupted by the Doctor, who informed him that he was expelled 
for a totally different offence: that on the Friday night previous 
there had been a drunken and riotous demonstration on the streets 



430 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

of the town, which was annoying to the citizens and disgraceful to 
all concerned ; that he was not only a participant, but the leading- 
actor in the shameful scenes enacted ; and that he had been expelled 
for this transgression. He affirmed that he had not been outside 
of the campus that Fridaj 1 - night, and that he had no more to do 
with the occurrence complained of than an}^ member of the Faculty 
who had pronounced sentence upon him. The Doctor interposed, 
and in a mild but very decided manner told him that the Faculty 
regarded the evidence against him as ample, and that there was 
only one thing left for him to do, to leave the College and the town. 

When he arose from his seat to leave, his excitement and emo- 
tions overpowered him, and, as he informed us, he "blubbered like 
a boy." Dr. Nevin followed him to the porch, gave him his hand in 
good-bye, and said in substance that whilst he recognized no reason 
for regret in the action of the Faculty, yet it was deeply painful to 
him to contemplate the cloud with which his own conduct had 
blighted his name and character ; for the evidence which identified 
him with the occurrence under consideration was ample and satis- 
factory to the Faculty. He then left, still weeping, walked from 
the yard to the College Campus, crossed it, and as he turned to 
ascend the steps leading to the portico, he saw Dr. Nevin still 
standing on his porch with his face towards him. At the moment 
he still looked sternty at him, as he thought, but it was in reality 
the father looking after a supposed prodigal leaving his house, 
where there was bread enough and to spare. 

He left the College and the town that day. It was a severe blow 
to his mother, who was a widow, who had been cherishing fond 
hopes that he would make his mark high up somewhere in the 
world and be a comfort to her in her declining years. Other friends 
had expectations that he would some da}' reflect credit on his name 
and family. He still asserted his innocence, but mairy hearts were 
sad. Soon afterwards, however, it was ascertained that a mistake 
had been made, that he told the truth, and that the innocent had 
suffered for the guilt}\ At the end of two weeks or ten days after 
he reached home, his mother received a letter from Prof. William 
M. Nevin, explanatory of the case, which she preserved and cher- 
ished to the daj T of her death. It stated that the sentence of ex- 
pulsion against him had been revoked, and recommended that he 
should be returned, to resume his standing and undergo his exam- 
ination preparatory to entering the Sophomore Class. This was 
done, and he alwa} T s was sure that the reversal and annulment of 
the sentence of expulsion was due to the intervention of Dr. Nevin, 



Chap. XXX V] good results 431 

as he was the only member of the Faculty to whom he had pleaded 
innocence, and who knew anything of the grounds of his defence. 
Three years afterwards when the Faculty met to confer the 
honors of the graduating class of 1849, Dr. Nevin was present and 
presiding. After announcing all the other honors he came to the 
Valedictorian, and then there was a pause, a suspense, and a silence 
scarcely broken by a drawn beneath. " In a tone and manner ," he 
once told us, "the recollections of which revive at this day — with 
the same throbbing emotions inspired many years ago in my bosom 
— the Doctor alluded to the sentence of expulsion that had been 
pronounced on one of the members of the class, three }^ears be- 
fore, and whilst he expressed satisfaction in the reversal of the 
sentence, he spoke in a dignified but feeling manner of the gratifi- 
cation experienced in being able to confer this collegiate honor on 
a name that had been wronged by that judgment." — His Valedic- 
tory was of a high order, one of the most beautiful ever delivered, 
singularly touching and delicate in its address to the Faculty and 
its learned head, which everybocty felt and appreciated. — The Vale- 
dictorian subsequently became distinguished in various capacities, 
and has reflected credit upon his family, his alma mater and his 
native State of Maryland at the bar and elsewhere, as an orator, 
omni laude cumulatus. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

WHEN Dr. Nevin consented to serve as President of Marshall 
College at Mercersburg, in the Spring of 1841, it was in- 
tended, as already said, that the arrangement should be only tem- 
porary. He supposed that in the course of a few years the endow- 
ment of the College would be so enlarged as to open the way for 
the support, in a respectable manner, not only of a full force of 
professors but of a president also. In this expectation, however, 
he was doomed to disappointment. The institution kept up ap- 
pearances and did its work of instruction in the best stj'le ; but it 
continued to be all along in a precarious financial condition, and 
its continuance depended largely on the gratuitous services of its 
temporary president, which, from ill health or other causes, might 
fail at any time, and as a consequence inflict serious harm upon its 
best interests. Such a status of affairs often saddened Dr. Kevin's 
mind. At times it appeared to him that the whole enterprise upon 
which he had bestowed so much labor and thought might collapse 
at any moment. On one occasion, in the 3^ear 1849, he with other 
members of the Faculty met in the family of the Rev. John Casper 
Bucher, a Reformed clergyman then residing at Mercersburg; and 
in the course of conversation the difficult} 7 of keeping the College 
afloat came up, and the question was asked whether it might not in 
some way be united with Franklin College at Lancaster, an institu- 
tion in which the Reformed Church owned a one-third interest. 
Mr. Bucher, who was a trustee of the latter institution, was in 
favor of such a suggestion and thought it could be carried out. It 
was then agreed that something of the nature of a proposal to that 
effect should be sent to Lancaster. But strange to say the same 
arrangement had been under cousideration, on the part of some 
persons, at least, at Lancaster. The Rev. Dr. Samuel W. Bowman, 
afterwards an Episcopal bishop, on his own responsibility, under- 
took to write a private letter to Mr. Bucher, proposing the consol- 
idation of the two institutions in a new one at Lancaster. The 
two letters, embodying the same proposition, passed each other on 
the way to their respective places of destination. — Franklin College 
was owned by three parties. One-third of the Trustees, according 
to the the charter, were members of the Reformed Church, one- 
third of the Lutheran, and the other third were to be the represent- 

(432) 



Chap. XXXVI] franklin college 433 

atives of the community generally. It received its charter from 
the State of Pennsylvania in 1*787, largely, it is said, through the 
influence of Benjamin Franklin, together with the grant of ten 
thousand acres of land in the northern part of the State as an en- 
dowment. In the beginning it was intended to be a school of high 
grade like Princeton or Yale College, for the benefit of the large 
population of the State that were of German extraction. 

According to the charter, granted by the Legislature under Gov- 
ernor Andrew Shulze, in 1787, it was intended for "the instruction 
of the youth in the German, English, Latin, Greek and other learned 
languages, in Theology, and in the useful arts, sciences and litera- 
ture; and from a profound respect for the talents, virtues, services 
to mankind in general, but more especially to this commonwealth, 
of his Excellency, Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, President of the 
Supreme Executive Council, the said College shall be and hereby 
is denominated Franklin College." — For various reasons, the origi- 
nal design of the institution was not carried out, and it never be- 
came an3 T thing more than a respectable Classical or High School 
for the city of Lancaster. 

But after the lapse of many years its lands came into the market, 
its funds increased, and just at the time that Marshall College at 
Mercersburg had a severe struggle for existence, it was thought by 
some of the more progressive Trustees of Franklin College that the 
time had arrived when the original intention of their institution 
should be carried out in the establishment of an institution of the 
highest grade at Lancaster. But as there were already numerous 
colleges in the State, a part of the Trustees thought it would be 
better to diminish rather than to increase the number. Accord- 
ingly, influenced to a large extent hy the reputation of the Mercers- 
burg Professors, they were successful in securing a majority of 
their number to vote in favor of consolidation with Marshall Col- 
lege. It was hoped at first by some of the more liberal minded 
members of the Board that the new institution should become a 
Union College under the control of the Lutheran and Reformed 
denominations. That would have enlarged its patronage and helped 
to make it the central College of the State. But the time had not 
yet come for the realization of such a liberal and noble idea. 

It was thought or felt, that it would work better in practice if 
the College was left to the control of a single denomination. It 
was, therefore, agreed that the Reformed Church should pay the 
Lutherans one-third of the value of the Franklin College property, 
amounting to $17,000, which was to be devoted to the endowment 



434 - AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlY. IX 

of the Franklin Professorship in Penns3~lvania College, a prominent 
Lutheran institution at Gettysburg, Pa. This amount of money, 
freely contributed by the Reformed churches, was promptly paid 
over on demand, and the arrangement came to be regarded as 
satisfactory on all sides. 

Thus the coast seemed to be clear at Lancaster, but there were se- 
rious difflcuties in the way, both there and elsewhere, that had to 
be encountered before the marriage of the two institutions could 
be celebrated. The Trustees of Marshall College were an incorpo- 
rated body, and their consent had to be secured before the interest 
could be taken out of their hands. A large portion of their num- 
ber resided at Mercersburg or not far away, and the institution had 
enlisted a large amount of local pride which it was difficult to over- 
come. They met at Chambersburg on the 26th of December, 1849, 
to consider the proposition made by the Trustees of Franklin College 
to consolidate the two institutions. Fortunately those of their num- 
ber residing at a distance were prompt in their attendance. After 
a long struggle the vote in favor of the removal of the College to 
Lancaster was carried b} T a fair majority. This was accomplished 
mainly by the strong personal influence of the President of Mar- 
shall College, who was present and advocated the measure with 
much earnestness as a necessity ; and a clear intimation of Provi- 
dence that it was a duty devolving on those present. He gave a 
plain statement of the precarious condition of the College, and the 
absolute necessity of immediate relief to prevent disaster to its 
most vital interests in the near future. His unvarnished tale, taken 
in connection with the record of his own arduous labors and self- 
sacrifices, carried the day, and the Reformed Trustees, — Wolff, 
Heyser, Rickenbaugk, Ruby, Kelker, Gloninger, Schell, Orr, Smith 
and others of Chambersburg or the vicinity, stood by him, nobly 
foregoing their local feelings or prejudices, and willing to make any 
sacrifice to promote the public interest. The Hon. David Krause, 
of Norristown, Pa., a learned' civilian, was also present, who, with 
his thorough knowledge of law, made it clear that there was no legal 
difficult}^ in the way of the proposed removal, and that in the cir 
cumstances it inflicted no injustice upon any persons concerned. 

When the Act of Consolidation came before the Legislature of 
Pennsylvania, earlv in the } T ear 1850, it was thought that the neces- 
saiy legislation could be secured without difficulty or delay. But 
it turned out that this was a mistake. It was ascertained that in- 
fluences were at work to bury the whole project beyond the possi- 
bility of a resurrection by methods best known to politicians of a 



Chap. XXXYI] the consolidation 435 

low order. It was, therefore, deemed necessary for Dr. Nevin to 
be on the ground at Harrisburg and spend a part of his time as a 
lobbyist — a strange occupation for a Professor of theology, but it 
is correct to say that he discharged this new function remarkably 
well. He found no one specially interested in the movement, which 
he regarded as one of the greatest importance to the State at large 
as well as to the Church. Some inquiries — sad to say — had been 
made whether there was any money in the affair, and some, it seems,- 
were waiting to see how much of. it was available before they were 
called on to vote. The Professor was somewhat shocked at such 
an idea, but when he was asked the question, he took it coolly and 
replied that nothing of the kind had been contemplated. Having 
found several intelligent listeners, one especially from the western 
part of the State, he explained to them the bearings of the pro- 
posed measure, that it was one of a purely benevolent character, 
but of vast importance to the State, and that in itself it was entitled 
to a prompt approval b}^ the Legislature. His hearers, when they 
were thus better instructed, informed him that in such a view of 
the case there would be no difficutty in either house. When, there- 
fore, it came up for consideration in both places, it had generous 
minded men to vouch for its approval and the bill was passed, 
leaving no further room for log-rolling, as it is called. The new 
charter was one of the most liberal kind ever granted by the State. 

At Lancaster, at the time the largest inland city in Pennsylva- 
nia, there was considerable excitement, when it was ascertained 
that a College was to be shortly located within its limits. The 
people were of two opinions, pro and con. Some of them, misin- 
formed and misled; regarded its advent as a calamity that ought, 
by all means, to be averted. Stories of College tricks and pranks 
were freety circulated, until some of the deluded people began to 
fear that they would not be safe in their houses, nor their poultry 
on their roosts at night, if wild students should come to live among 
them. At length it was deemed best to call a public meeting and 
have the matter discussed and ventilated, so that all might receive 
proper information and learn how the matter stood. It was largely 
attended and the Court-house was crowded with interested listeners. 

Dr. S. W. Bowman, not accustomed to address meetings of this 
description but always eloquent in the pulpit, made on this occa- 
sion a thrilling speech. Some of his hearers thought that the High 
School was all that was needed for the purpose of an education, 
and were apprehensive that it might, in some wa}^, be eclipsed b}' 
the college. The Doctor, therefore, dilated on the value of a higher 



436 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

education than anything that could be secured in high schools gener- 
ally. In his remarks he very felicitously referred to the Hon. James 
Buchanan, sitting in the audience, who had just returned from 
England as American Minister, and quoted him as an illustration 
of the benefit of a classical or college education. The remark re- 
ceived due credit from Mr. Buchanan's numerous friends, but the 
opposition to the college project was represented by some able 
men of the bar or others, and it was deemed the part of prudence 
not to take any vote at this meeting, but to appoint a daj r on which 
all the people could express their sentiment at the polls by voting 
on the question of College or No College. It was believed that 
the College would win the day, and understood that all hands af- 
terwards would be satisfied with the decision of the majority. 

The friends of the College at first had no apprehension that there 
would be any danger in the application of such a test as this, but to 
their surprise they found that they were mistaken as the day for the 
vote approached. The votes in opposition increased from day to 
day, and they found it necessary to go out on the streets and exert 
themselves, lest after all they might lose the prize which they sup- 
posed they had already gained. The best citizens of Lancaster 
turned out to stem the tide, and Dr. Bowman did not consider it 
beneath his robes to take part in the canvass. It was well that 
they did. An unusually large vote was polled on this vexed ques- 
tion, and when the tickets were counted it turned out that the Col- 
lege had gained the day only hy an inconsiderable majority. The 
victory, however, was decisive, and according to promise all active 
opposition ceased. — When the College de facto was located in the 
city, the students at first were looked upon with suspicion, by the 
townsmen or roughs ; but it grew in public estimation, and gained 
throughout the communit}' a respect seldom enjoyed by institu- 
tions of this description. — Mr. Buchanan, who had always taken a 
lively interest in the College at Mercersburg, his birthplace, and a 
personal friend of the professors, took an active and liberal part in 
securing for it a new home at Lancaster, in which he co-operated 
freely with such prominent citizens of the city and county as 
Dr. S.W. Bowman, Dr. John L. Atlee, John Re3 T nolds, Hon. Henry 
G. Long, Emanuel C. Reigart, Esq., Hon. A. L. Hayes, D. W. Pat- 
terson, Esq., Nathaniel Ellmaker, Esq., Christopher Hager, John 
Bailsman, Dr. Samuel Humes, Hon. Joseph Konigmacher, Hon. 
William Hiester, Abraham Peters, and others. 

Another difficulty in effecting the union of the two institutions 
was experienced in raising the necessary funds, $25,000, for the 



Chap. XXXVI] difficulties in the way 437 

erection of suitable buildings for the accommodation of the College, 
pledged to Marshall College as a condition of the unification. In 
itself considered this amount was nothing formidable for such a 
wealthy community as that found within the limits of the city and 
county of Lancaster. But, as already said, the people were not of 
the same mind, and with many of them at that time colleges were 
more than questionable in their general influence, and college stu- 
dents a nuisance rather than otherwise. The Rev. John Casper 
Bucher was appointed to collect the funds, on the ground that he 
possessed the necessary qualifications for a work of this kind and 
that he was deeply interested in its success. He entered upon his 
task in the spring of- the year 1850, but it was not until some time 
in the year 1852 that he was able to make assurance double sure, 
and report that the task had been accomplished. There were few 
at the time, who could have brought more faith, patience or energy 
to a work like this, which at times seemed to be encompassed with 
invincible difficulties. He contended most valorously at his post 
until he had secured $22,000 for the project, when the noble-minded 
Trustees, alread}' named, took the matter in hand and raised the 
balance needed by their own exertions and liberality. 

During this period of suspense, the author of this volume was 
brought within the inner circle of college affairs at Mercersburg. 
He was called to take charge of the Reformed congregation in the 
place as pastor, and in connection with this he was asked to fill the 
chair of Mathematics and Mechanical Philosophy in the College. 
Previous to this he had witnessed only the bright side of his Alma 
Mater, its commencements, its anniversaries or other festivals, which 
were redolent of the classics or of a divine philosophy. He was some- 
what surprised at the grim spectre which he was compelled to wit- 
ness behind fair external appearances. Prof. William M. Nevin had 
about twice as many recitations in the ancient languages as usually 
fall to the lot of professors now-a-days. Dr. Traill Green, after a 
heroic struggle to keep up interest in the study of the natural 
sciences, with no prospect that his department would be supplied 
with the necessary apparatus, with a measure of disappointment and 
discouragement, in the year 1848 had resigned the position which he 
had filled so well, and was succeeded by Professor Thomas C. Porter, 
who was performing the uphill work with youthful energy and enthu- 
siasm. Professor Samuel W. Budd, Professor of Mathematics, a 
pillar in the College, and with Dr. Rauch, one of its founders, had 
fallen at his post in 1846. Thomas D. Baird, Esq., had succeeded 
him in 1847, and then was compelled to withdraw in 1849, because 



438 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

the College did not have the funds on hand to pay him a regular pro- 
fessor's salarj^. His department, all important as it was, therefore, 
remained vacant until the good congregation of the place allowed 
its pastor to take charge of it at a nominal salary, on the 1st of 
January, 1851. Previously to this Dr. Nevin, in order to keep the 
College afloat, undertook to fill the mathematical chair himself, 
teaching all its branches, except one, from Algebra up to Calculus, 
and from Mechanics up to Astronomy. To maintain the reputation 
of the institution and to prevent it from disintegrating, he had as- 
sumed these duties, in addition to those of President of the College, 
Professor in the Seminaiy, and the prolific contributor to the Mer- 
cersburg Beuiew, sounding the depths of the Church Question, 
fighting Sectism, and preaching about once every Sunday to the 
broken down congregation in the town. We were surprised and 
amazed. The Church at large was certainly not aware of the her- 
culean labors of its Professor at Mercersburg, and we cheerfully 
consented to relieve him of a part of his burden. We once asked 
him how he got along in wading through mathematical questions. 
He replied that he found the greatest difficulty in mastering unim- 
portant problems in Algebra, which sometimes occupied an entire 
afternoon of his time. They had to be solved so that the teacher 
might maintain the confidence of his pupils. 

During the year 1851, it was doubtful whether the agent at Lan- 
caster would be successful in raising the necessary funds for new 
buildings, according to the terms of the contract already referred to. 
Dr. Nevin had in a great measure lost confidence in the movement, 
and the citizens of Mercersburg were quite well satisfied with the 
apparent failure. Had they and their neighbors at this time in that 
section of the country stepped forward when the} T had the oppor- 
tunity and pledged $10,000 for the better endowment of the College 
at Mercersburg, Dr. Nevin would have been entirely satisfied that 
the College should remain where it was, and have taken measures 
to induce the Trustees to decline the proposition offered from Lan- 
caster. But God rules in all things, and before the close of the } T ear 
a cloud, not much larger than a man's hand, appeared on the eastern 
horizon, and gradually it began to appear that the indefatigable 
Mr. Bucher after all was bound to succeed in his work, and that the 
long talked of removal of the College was destined to become an 
accomplished fact. 

As a matter of course, in the beginning of this movement to con- 
solidate, it was generally supposed that the Theological Seminary 
would be removed to Lancaster with the College, and that both Dr. 



Chap. XXXVI] farewell words 439 

Nevin and Dr. Schaff, whose fame had given inspiration to the 
movement, would come with it and the College. But it was 
thought best, although perhaps without sufficient reasons, that it 
should be left where it was for the time being in a state of unnatural 
divorce from the College. Dr. Nevin furthermore let it be known 
that it was his intention to withdraw from any further connec- 
tion with the College after its removal. This was a severe disap- 
pointment to the friends of the projct, especially to those residing 
at Lancaster, and it was difficult to understand his reasons for with- 
drawing from the field at this critical juncture of affairs. He acted, 
as he believed, and as we might suppose, conscientiously and from 
honest motives. In a private interview, which the author had 
sought to induce him to comply with the general wish, he stated 
his reasons for the course he intended to pursue. Among other 
things he said that, as was well known, he was not satisfied with 
the present state of Protestantism and much less so with that of 
Romanism; that he had published his views freely; that he did not 
wish to burden the new institution with the odium or opposition 
which the}^ had called forth; and that the College was most likely 
to do better under a new president to whom there could be no ob- 
jection on account of his philosophy or theology, as was the case 
with himself. This was no insuperable objection to his remaining 
in the College, as he had been informed by Dr. Bowman and others 
that he should never be disturbed in the discharge of his duties on 
account of his theological views. The main difficulty, he said, that 
hvv in the way of further official duty of any kind in the Church, 
was the precarious condition of his health, which was very much 
broken down. Manifest^ he was in doubt whether he would live 
much longer; at least he felt that it was a duty to himself now 
for the present to retire from further public service in the Church. 
As the Winter Term of the College drew towards its close in 
the Spring of 1853, it was difficult for the students or people at 
Mercersburg to realize the fact, that it was to be the last that was 
to be spent in that village. As its end approached there was some 
fear that the students might be imprudent, and as a consequence be 
assaulted on the street in the evening by disorderly persons, who, 
in the spirit of mischief, proposed to send them awa}< with some 
mementos of a fracas, which the}^ would not forget. But this rude- 
ness ended in better feelings on both sides. It so happened that 
one of the Literary Societies celebrated its anniversary on the last 
evening of the Term, which brought a large concourse of people 
together. At the conclusion of the exercises, it was suggested to 



440 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1811-1853 [DlV. IX 

Dr. Nevin that he should take occasion to speak a few parting 
words in behalf of the students and professors. He said with con- 
siderable emotion that they did not leave because they were not 
attached to the place ; not because the}' did not admire the magnifi- 
cent scener}' surrounding it, its bright skies, or its forest groves ; 
and least of all, because they were not attached to its intelligent 
people. All its scenes they loved them well. Higher considera- 
tions, affecting the progress and betterment -of the College alone 
had called for the change, and it was now with the greatest regret 
that he gave the audience their best wishes on the eve of their de- 
parture. Mercersburg would never be forgotten by those who had 
studied in the quiet, classic retreat which it had offered to succes- 
sive generations of students. With many of them it would be a 
second Mecca, to which their thoughts would often revert when 
passing through the rough conflicts of life, and there find rest and 
peace of mind in the recollections of the past. Aud, as he pre- 
dicted, some, at least in after years, would visit the spot in person, 
to revive old associations and call up the lessons of wisdom and 
truth, which they had there learned in the days of their youth. 
Words like these made a favorable impression on the minds of all 
present, and there was probably no one in the Church who was not 
prepared to say, Depart in peace. Mercersburg became truly hal- 
lowed to many, who in after years visited it, and few failed at such 
times to feel the force of Dr. Johnson's famous words : 

" To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossi- 
ble if it were endeavored. Whatever withdraws us from the power 
of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, 
predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of think- 
ing beings. Far from me, and my friends, be such frigid philosoph}' 
as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which 
has been dignified by wisdom, braveiy, or virtue. That man is 
little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the 
plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among 
the ruins of Iona." 

The bill for the charter for the consolidation of the two Colleges 
was passed b}~ the Legislature on the 19th of April, 1850, but it 
was not issued by the Governor until all the conditions included 
were complied with, in 1852. Soon afterwards the new Board of 
Trustees was organized, and among other things proceeded to 
elect a new facuhy. As Dr. Nevin, according to his own statement, 
was not an available candidate for the office of the presidency of 
the college, it was thought by some that the way was now open to 



Chap. XXXVI] the faculty organize 441 

reconstruct the faculty and to give it a new character and animus, 
somewhat different from what it had possessed at Mercersburg, and 
as expressed in the Mercersburg Review. A candidate for the office 
of President was brought forward, fortified by high recommenda- 
tions from his Alma Mater in the East, but in little sympathy 
with the life of the College at Mercersburg, and recommended by 
a committee of the Board. In the absence of any other available 
condidate, he was favored by a considerable number of the 
Trustees, without much foresight or consideration. Thereupon, 
the Hon. John W. Killinger, a graduate of the college at Mercers- 
burg, in 1843, understanding instinctively the drift of affairs and 
its influence on the future of the College, rose up and in an eloquent 
speech proposed as a substitute the name of Dr. Nevin in the place 
of the one named in the report. His motion was carried and Dr. 
Nevin was elected, with only a slender hope that he might reconsider 
his decision and respond favorably to the wish of the Board. This 
he consented to do, and therefore made no opposition to his elec- 
tion. By holding the call in his hand for awhile, the Trustees, as 
he thought, might have time to think, and so be able to select some 
other competent person for the post upon whom all could unite. 

At the same meeting of the Board an effort was also made to re- 
construct the Faculty by introducing one or two new Professors 
in the place of those who were to be left out; but all the old Pro- 
fessors of Marshall College were re-elected as best qualified to 
guide the institution in its new quarters, and to maintain its true 
and original character unaltered. It was just what was right and 
proper. Dr. Nevin did not see his way clear to yield to the wishes 
of the Board, but his spirit, his philosophy and theological tenden- 
cies were left to pervade the College without any interruption. 
There was no change in the text-books, and his Christian Ethics 
continued to be taught as before, from the brief compends of his lec- 
tures which the students had brought from Mercersburg. — Thus the 
College had free scope to remain as a part of his work as in da}^s 
gone by. 

Dr. Nevin having declined to accept of the appointment urged 
upon him officially, Dr. Philip Schaff was unanimously elected to 
fill his place in the College at Lancaster, but the Synod was not will- 
ing that he should withdraw from his position in the Seminary at 
Mercersburg, and it therefore remained for over a year without a 
head, until the fall of 1854, when Dr. E. Y. Gerhart, President of 
Heidelberg College, Tiffin, Ohio, and one of the oldest graduates of 
Marshall College, was elected President with much cordiality, who, 
28 



442 AT MERCERSBURG FROM 1844-1853 [DlV. IX 

with the old Faculty intact, was in a position to cany forward its 
interests in the spirit of Rauch and Xevin. Here, as in other things, 
the hand of Providence manifested itself in enabling the College 
to grow in its own likeness and image, without suffering any harm 
to its historical integrity. 

The Faculty, translated from Mercersburg to Lancaster unchanged , 
was strengthened by a new colleague in the person of Adolphus L. 
Koeppen as Professor of German Literature, History and ^Esthetics, 
who here deserves a passing notice. — He was born at Copenhagen, 
Denmark, Feb. 14, 1804, where he completed his studies in the uni- 
versity. Travelling in Greece, in 1834, he was invited to fill the 
Professorship of History, Archaeology and Modern Languages in the 
Military College on the island of ^Egina. Whilst thus engaged he 
availed himself of his opportunities to make a careful and thorough 
examination of the antiquities of Greece. In consequence of the 
opposition to foreigners which broke out suddenl}^ in 1843, he with 
others was compelled to leave his lovely Hellas, as he was wont to 
call his classic home. In 1846, he came to America, where for a 
number of 3-ears he delivered lectures on histoiy at various promi- 
nent institutions in the country. — He was Professor in Franklin 
and Marshall College from 1853 to 1861. He then went to Ger- 
manj', and at Dresden met the Greek Commissioners on their way 
to Copenhagen to bring young King George to Athens, and at 
their request he accompanied them on their journey as a friend 
and interpreter. Subsequent^ he became the tutor of the young 
ruler in modern Greek, and afterwards librarian of the ro}-al library 
and a member of the Court. He died from the effects of an acci- 
dent that befell him in mounting his horse in the royal suite, April 
14, 18T3. 

Whilst Professor at Lancaster he prepared for the press his 
" World in the Middle Ages," in two volumes, accompanied with an 
" Historico-Geographical Atlas," published b} r Appleton & Co., New 
York, in 1854. The work, like the author, teemed with accurate 
learning, and was one of great value to scholars and literary men. 
He was a frequent contributor to the Mercersburg Review; and as 
he discovered that it was discussing pretty extensively the Christi- 
anity and Church of the Middle Ages, he said he would supplv the 
theologians with a Geography and Atlas of that period and thus 
help them in their researches. He was eccentric, and somewhat 
sceptical in religious matters, which he regretted, but as he always 
said, a member of the Church of the Augsburg Confession, in which 
he had been baptized and confirmed. 



X-IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 

Mt. 50-58 



CHAPTER XXXVII 



WHEX the College was removed from Mercersburg in the 
Spring of 1853, the way was open for Dr. Nevin to retire 
from public life, and find that rest for his body and mind which, 
after thirteen years of the most intense mental activity, he needed 
more than anything else. His retirement, just at this time, was no 
doubt the means of prolonging his days, and of giving him new 
vigor and strength for future service and usefulness in the Church. 
He himself was under the impression that his work on earth was 
finished, as already said, and that now it only remained for him to 
prepare for another world. But, like Christian pilgrims generally, 
he could see only through a glass darkly, and did not know that he 
was needed yet many years to assist in completing and consolidat- 
ing the work which he had helped to inaugurate in the Church of 
Christ. He lingered for a brief period on the field of his hard 
fought battles at Mercersburg; but in 1854 removed with his family 
to Carlisle, Pa., where, amidst interesting historical associations, 
and in pleasant literary intercourse with the Professors of Dickin- 
son College, it was thought he could recruit his physical and mental 
energies. But one of the Professors of the College at Lancaster, 
happening to pass along that way, made it a point to stop and see 
him. Under the impression that after all the Doctor was not where 
he ought to be, somewhat officiously perhaps, he gave it as his de- 
cided opinion that Lancaster was the proper place of residence for 
him and his family, in which Mrs. Nevin, much concerned for her 
husband's health and comfort at the time, fully concurred. It was 
evident that he was not in all respects at home where he had taken 
up his abode, and accordingly in 1855 he and his family removed 
to Lancaster. — Mrs. Jenkins, his mother-in-law, dying soon after- 
wards, it devolved on him as an executor to assist in settling up 
her estate ; and accordingly he removed to Windsor Place, where, 
amidst charming scenery and interesting family associations, he 
continued to reside from 1856 to 1858. 

(443) 



444 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

Here during this period the officers of a neighboring Episcopal 
congregation requested hirn to preach for them as a supply. Hav- 
ing ascertained that the}- had a right to make this request, and that 
it was satisfactory to his friend Bishop Potter, he complied with 
their wish, very much, it is said, to the edification of his Episcopal 
brethren as long as he preached for them. After his presence seemed 
to be no longer needed at Churchtown, he purchased a small farm 
of fifteen acres of land near Lancaster, erected on it a fine residence 
and made it his permanent abode. He superintended the erection of 
the building himself, and in so doing showed that he had practical 
talent, sufficient to build a house — with the aid, however, of Mrs. 
Nevin, a lady with practical ideas — as well as construct theories of 
theolog}' or philosoplry. Like a wise man he sat down first and 
then counted the exact cost of the structure, and it turned out that 
it did not cost more nor less than his calculations had called for. 
His knowledge of mathematics was here utilized, and his estimate 
of the number of bricks needed for the house was found to be 
strictly correct after it was finished. 

The erection of a new house called for other buildings and a 
variety of improvements to make Caernarvon compare favorably 
with Windsor Place. Attention had to be given also to the farm, 
the horses and the cows, and Dr. Nevin, as in his younger daj r s, 
could again "put himself to all kinds of agricultural labor." He 
could plough his own acres, and do such other farm work as he 
deemed necessary. On one occasion as the author passed b} T on the 
pike, he saw him on a warm day pitching ha}' from the barn-floor 
into the mow, evideutty in a hurry, as the clouds indicated a shower 
before evening. He reminded us of the ancient philosopher Thales, 
who once devoted a period of time to the culture of olives, in order 
to set a good example of industry to his neighbors, who thanked 
him for the improvements he introduced into their art. Caernarvon 
farm, garden, and lawn improved in appearance from year to year, 
and Lancaster county farmers, as the}^ passed b}-, looked in and 
were pleased to see that the place kept up with the times in the 
" garden spot " of the State — thanks to a lad3 T 's taste and oversight. 

On one occasion, Mrs. ISTevin, with the children, expected to be 
•away from home a da}' or two, and as she was about to leave, she, 
in the wa} T of pleasantly, told a young friend, a little daughter of 
a neighbor living near b} T , to look after the Doctor and take 
good care of him during her absence. The child took it seri- 
ousl}' and under a sense of responsibility watched him during 
the day, and peering through the trees, saw him on a cheriy tree 



Chap. XXXYII] the formal opening 445 

picking the ripe cherries! She immediately took her position un- 
der the tree and asked him to come down immediately. At first 
he demurred, and was no doubt amused at the simplicity of the 
child. But in a firm tone she became more urgent, and informed 
him that Mrs. Nevin had told her to take care of him whilst she 
was away, and that he must now come down at once. He meekly 
obeyed this order, and no doubt began to reflect on the wisdom 
given by God to little children. Had he remained on the tree he 
might have fallen and lost his life; and possibly the wee lady was 
thus the means of preserving a life which afterwards became fruitful 
and of extended usefulness. — The great Syrian general in Scripture 
was once restored to health by taking the advice of a little maiden. 

Fortunately, however, Dr. Nevin, during this period of retire- 
ment, was not allowed to be laid aside altogether, so far as his in- 
tellectual talents were concerned. One occasion after another 
brought him out of his seclusion, and his services, in diiferent ways, 
were called into requisition pro Christo et pro JEcclesia ejus. — After 
the College was removed to Lancaster, it was deemed proper to 
proclaim its formal opening by holding a public meeting in Fulton 
Hall, on the 7th of June, 1853, which was largely attended and 
served to excite no small amount of enthusiasm among the citizens. 
The Right Rev. Alonzo Potter, D. D., Bishop of Pennsylvania, was 
present and added to the interest of the occasion Iry a graceful and 
appropriate speech* in behalf of the State of Pennsylvania ; an 
address of welcome was made in behalf of the city of Lancaster 
by the Hon. A. L. Hayes ; and it fell to the lot of Dr. Nevin to 
represent the Faculty and College in a discourse, which, although 
of considerable length, was listened to with breathless attention 
by an intelligent audience. 

"The State of Pennsylvania," said Dr. Nevin, in his introductory 
remarks, "has not unaptly been compared to a Sleeping Giant. 
The trope finds its application and signification in three points of 
resemblance. In the first place, in itself considered, it is of large 
size and strength. By the extent of its territory, its fertility of 
soil, its mineral resources, its facilities and opportunities of trade, 
the peculiar character of its vast and sturdy population, its solid 
material wealth, and its commanding geographical position in the 
midst of the general American Union, it possesses a greatness and 
importance which must at once be acknowledged by the whole 
world. Politically, it forms the keystone of the arch, on which 
rests the structure of our glorious Republic. — In the second place, 
however, this great giant is still, to no small extent, asleep. Much 



446 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

of its strength has never been developed ; and such force, as it has 
come naturally to exercise, is too often put forth in a compara- 
tively blind waj T , without the waking insight and self-conscious 
purpose, that should go along with it to make it of complete ac- 
count. — But our figure implies, in the third place, that the giant, 
which is now sleeping, will in due time awake. The torpor, which 
we see here, is not of death. It is the rest rather of living powers, 
which may be expected to break forth hereafter, with a force pro- 
portional to the long restraint that has gone before. The secret 
strength and hidden resources of this great Commonwealth, as yet 
only coming into A r iew, may be expected to reveal themselves in 
another and altogether different way. 

" The undeveloped wealth of the State is at once both material 
and moral. It is only of late, as we all well know, that the plrysical 
resources, which it carries in its bosom, have begun to be property 
understood and improved; and who shall say what treasures, richer 
than the gold mines of California or Australia, are still not reserved 
in this form for its future use? But it is not too much to say, that 
the latent spiritual capabilities of the State are fairty parallel with 
this condition of her natural resources, quite as full of promise, and 
of course much more entitled to our patriotic interest and regard. 
In comparing one countiy or region with another, intellectualty, it 
is not enough to look simply at the difference of culture which imiy 
exist between them at a given time. Regard nfust be had also to 
the constitutional character of the mind itself, the quality of the 
moral soil, if we may use the expression, to which the culture is 
applied. — In this view, we think it not absurd to magnify the mind 
of Pennsylvania, although it be fashionable in certain quarters, we 
know, to treat it with disparagement and contempt. For our own 
part, we are persuaded that the State has no reason to shrink here 
from comparison with any section of our flourishing and highly 
favored land. — Tliat growth is not ordinarily the best, which is most 
rapid and easy, and which serves to bring into view with the greatest 
readiness all it has in its power to reveal. It is b} T slow processes 
rather, that what is most deep and solid, whether in the world of 
nature or in the world of mind, is ripened and unfolded finally into 
its proper perfection. There is room for encouragement in this 
thought, when we look at the acknowledged deficiencies and short- 
comings of our giant State with regard to education. 

" It was far better, we may believe, that the peculiar constituents 
of our life, the elements from which was to be formed in the end 
the common character of the State, should not be forced into pre- 



Chap. XXXYII] dr. nevin's address 447 

mature activity ; bet be left rather to work like the hidden powers 
of nature for a time, without noise or show, in the way of silent 
necessary preparation for their ultimate destiny and use. In such 
view, they are like the mineral wealth that lies buried so largely 
beneath our soil, whose value is created to no small extent by wants 
and opportunities, which time only could bring to pass. All that 
is wanted, therefore, now to make them a source of intellectual and 
moral greatness is, that they should be subjected to educational 
processes answerable to their own nature, and wrought into such 
form of general culture as this may be found to require. And may 
we not say, that the hour of Providence has struck for the accom- 
plishment of this great work. With the migMry strides the State of 
Pennsylvania is now making in outward wealth and prosperity, is 
it too much to cherish the pleasing belief that she is fully prepared 
also for a corresponding development of the rich energies that have 
thus far slumbered to a great extent in her moral and spiritual life ; 
and that intellectually as well as material^ from this time on- 
ward, her course is destined to be like that of the rising sun, which 
shineth more and more unto the perfect da}^. 

" What has now been said of the general intellectual character 
and condition of the State, may be referred with special application 
to the German element, which has entered so largely from the first 
into the composition of its life. — Altogether, it is evident enough, 
that the German population in our midst has had much to do with 
the somewhat proverbial sluggishness of our State, thus far, in the 
march of intellectual improvement ; and much reproach has been 
cast upon it, as being a sort of Boeotian drawback and drag on 
the whole life of the State, greatly to its disparagement, especial^ 
as compared with its more smart and forward neighbors of the 
North and East. But if the German mind of Pennsylvania has 
stood in the way of letters, heretofore, and caused her to lag be- 
hind other States in the policy of Education, we may see in it, at 
the same time, the fair promise and pledge of a more auspicious 
future, that shall serve hereafter to redeem her character on this 
score from all past and present blame. So far as this large mass 
of mind is concerned, it is owing, certainly, to no constitutional 
inferiority, that it has not yielded more fruit in the way of knowl- 
edge and culture. The fact, as we have just seen, is sufficiently 
explained by other causes. Regarded as material simply, no body 
of mind in the country is more susceptible of education, or more 
favorably disposed for the reception of it, in its most healthy and 
vigorous form. Who that knows airything of Germany itself, will 



448 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

have to be told that there is no affinity between the spirit of such 
a people and the cause of knowledge, or that it can require anj- 
thing more than proper opportunity and encouragement, in any 
circumstances, to bring this affinity finally into view ? 

" In this view, we have no reason to be ashamed of the German 
character of our State. There is a blessing in it, with all its faults, 
and the time has now come, we may trust, when the secret power 
of this blessing will begin to make itself extensively felt. The 
hinderances, which have heretofore stood in the waj^ of its moral 
and intellectual advancement, are happily fast disappearing. Our 
German population has begun to free itself everywhere from the 
thraldom of an isolated, and, therefore, comparatively stagnant and 
dead social position, maintained heretofore through the use of a 
foreign tongue, and is entering more and more into free, active 
communication with the general life of the State. With the falling 
away of this middle wall of partition, old prejudices and old oc- 
casions of prejudice are rapidly losing their power. A new inter- 
est is beginning to make itself felt on all sides in favor of educa- 
tion. Much, of course, very much, still remains to be desired ; but 
never before has there been the same room for encouragement that 
there is now, in the way of what may be regarded as a fair prepa- 
ration at least, and promise here in the right direction. The field 
is already white to harvest. What is wanted is, that the rich op- 
portunity should he rightty understood, and vigorously, as well as 
wisely, applied. 

"In such circumstances, the true idea of education, for an}^ par- 
ticular portion of the country, should be felt to involve much more 
than a blind outward following, merely, of such modes and habits 
of intelligence as may have come to prevail in some other parts. 
The case requires rather that every section of the land should fall 
back as much as possible upon the true ground of its own life, and 
aim at a culture which may, as far as possible, correspond with this, 
and thus serve most effectually to bring out its proper capabilities 
in their best and most perfect form. No system of education, 
therefore, taken as a whole, can be regarded as complete for Penn- 
sylvania, in which account is not made practically of the German 
mind and the German character as such. We do not mean by this, 
of course, that the German tongue should be retained in common 
use, or that the German national usages and customs are to be care- 
fully carried forward from one generation to another. When we 
speak of German character we mean something much deeper than 
this. We refer rather to the nature of the German mind as such, 



Chap. XXXVII] anglo-german education 449 

its distinguishing spirit, its constitutional organization, its histor- 
ical substance and form. It is true indeed, that this has undergone 
a certain modification by the influences to which it has been sub- 
jected thus far in the new world, but it has entered largely, as a 
lasting constituent, into the universal character of the State, and 
it is in this view especially, we say, it is entitled to continual prac- 
tical regard in our schemes of intellectual and moral improvement. 
Our Anglo-German character demands an Anglo-German education. 

"From what has already been said, it is plain that this require- 
ment is one which cannot be met adequately by our common schools. 
Viewed as a matter of education, the spirit that should rule them 
must descend into them from a higher quarter, from the university 
or the college. Here we see the true relation between the college 
and the school, between education in its higher and education in 
its lower character. Nothing can well be more foolish and absurd 
than to think of exalting one of these interests at the cost of the 
other, or to imagine that there exists between them any sort of real 
contrariety or opposition. A true system of education for any 
people must embrace both; and it must embrace both always in 
this relation, that the spirit of the College shall give tone and char- 
acter to the spirit of the School, as it ought to make itself felt in- 
deed in the spiritual life of the entire community. It is to our 
colleges then we must look mainty for the proposed solution of the 
problem now before us, an educational culture that majr fairly be 
answerable to the wants of Pennsylvania, as an Anglo-German 
State. And if they are not brought to provide for the case, it will 
be in vain to expect that suitable provision can ever be made for 
it in any other way. 

"An institution suited to the character of Pennsylvania, and 
carrying in it a proper relation to its educational wants, particularly 
at the present time, needs to be English altogether in its general 
course of studies, and yet of such reigning spirit that both the Ger- 
man language and habit of thought shall feel themselves to be easily 
at home within its bosom. The presence of this element will be 
cherished with true congenial SA^mpathy and respect. The power 
of a natural affinity with it will be felt and acknowledged on all 
sides. A living communication will be maintained with the liter- 
ature and science, philosophy and religion of Germany itself, serv- 
ing to promote, at the same time, an intelligent regard for the Ger- 
man life at home, with a proper insight into its merits and defects, 
its capacities and wants. Such an institution will have faith in the 
resources of this home life, as such ; it will understand the true sense 



450 IN RETIREMENT EROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

of it, the sterling qualities that lie hid beneath its rude and rough 
exterior; and will address itself honestly and heartily to the task of 
developing and drawing out these qualities in their own proper form, 
in the full persuasion that no better material, no more worthy 
sphere of service, and no surer promise of success in the end, could 
be offered to it from any other quarter or in any different form. 

"Making itself one in this wa} T , and feeling itself one, with the 
natural spirit of the State, so far as it is German, an institution of 
this sort must carr}^ with it at once a passport to the good opinion 
and confidence of our German citizenship ; for it is wonderful how 
like makes itself intelligible to like, and the sense of a common 
nature seems to draw the most different forms of mind together, 
causing even children, for instance, to feel themselves familiar! } T at 
home with age and authority in one case, while the} 7 shrink from 
their presence in another. Such fellow feeling in the case before 
us must open the way immediately for the happiest results. The 
German mind of Pennsylvania, seeing and feeling the real signifi- 
cance of its own nature, reflected upon it in this wa} T from an insti- 
tution of learning realty and truly belonging to itself, cannot fail 
to be inspired with a new sense of independence and becoming self- 
respect. No object deserves to be considered as more important 
than this for the cause of education in our State ; and if a college 
ma}^ be so constructed and ordered, as by its relationship with the 
German mind among us to become an interpreting key that shall 
serve to make this mind in any measure rightty intelligible to itself, 
it will, by such good office alone, have clone more for the State 
than can be well expressed. 

" A proper patronage will be called forth in support of a system 
of education, which is thus appreciated and understood by the 
people. It will become more and more the fashion to send their 
sons to college ; and the influence of the college will be made in 
this way again to reach forth more and more extensively upon the 
community. The case will be one of continual action and reaction ; 
and so long as the institution remains true to its original character, 
and tries to carry out faithfully, as it ought to do, its proper mis- 
sion and task, as a college for Pennsylvania, and not for some 
other State, working thus in harmon} T with the natural spirit of the 
State itself, and finding in it a congenial element, it will make itself 
felt upon this more and more as a source of general education, giv- 
ing tone and character to its universal life. Such we consider to 
be the general process by which it might be possible to realize the 
conception of a reigning education, property adapted to the Ger- 



Chap. XXXVII] anglo-germanism 451 

man character of Pennsylvania, and which every true friend of the 
State should be willing to approve and encourage for this purpose. 

" The German language must soon pass out of popular use, and 
along with it will disappear with inevitable necessity much of the 
outward show and fashion of our good old Pennsylvania life, as it 
now stands. The time is fast coming on, think of it as we may, 
when this good old life will exist only in story or in song, like that 
which Diedrich Knickerbocker has rendered so illustrious in his 
ever memorable history of New York. In this approaching revo- 
lution and wreck, if aii3 T thing, however, is to be saved, it can only 
be the soul, the spirit, the inward genius and power of what is thus 
in every other view doomed to destruction. But, as we have now 
seen, the spiritual conservatism, which is needed for securing a vic- 
tory of this sort over such a crisis, is a power that can be exercised 
only by our colleges. 

" It is hardly necessary to remark, that what we have now said 
looks in no way to the idea of anything like an exclusive German 
spirit in our system of German education. The life of German}^, 
as such, can never, and should never, become the life of any part of 
these United States; just as little as the life, in any like view, of 
England, Italy or France. All that we mean is, that the German 
mind among us should come in for its just share of regard, as a 
vast and mighty element in the composition of our State. Respect 
must be had also, of course, and in the nature of the case always 
will be had in more than full proportion, to what may be denom- 
inated the naturally English side of our life. What the case de- 
mands, as we have already intimated, is an Anglo-German educa- 
tion — a form of intellectual and moral culture, in which the English 
and German nationality shall be happily blended together in the 
power of a common spirit fairly representing the mixed character 
of the State. The two orders of life are eminently well fitted to 
flow in this way into one; and the combination, we believe, would 
give a result which in the end must prove itself to be better than 
either. Towards the accomplishment of this great object, the 
patriotic wishes of all good Pennsylvanians should be actively 
turned. And now especially, when the fulness of time might seem 
to be at hand for it in the course of God's providence, it ought to 
be the aim and scope of our whole educational policy. 

" The interest and importance of this celebration turn altogether, 
we may say, on the relation it bears to the cause, whose claims I 
have thus far been endeavoring to explain and enforce. The open- 
ing of Franklin and Marshall College in the city of Lancaster is an 



452 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

event which deserves to be proclaimed in this way, and one which 
is destined, we trust, to be held in long remembrance hereafter, not 
simply because a new Institution of learning is thus introduced 
under favorable auspices to the attention of the world ; but especi- 
ally and mainly for this reason, that the Institution in question is 
one, which, by all its connections and relations, stands pledged to 
sustain such a true Anglo-German character, as we have seen to be 
needed for Pennsj^lvania, and may be expected to do much towards 
solving practically the problem of right education in the State 
under this form. 

" The new college is formed by the consolidation of two char- 
tered institutions, both of which were intended, from the begin- 
ning, to serve the cause of learning, more particularly among the 
German part of our population. The funds of Franklin College 
were created by the Legislature of the State, expressly for this 
purpose, and could never have been devoted to b,uj other without 
a solemn breach of trust. Marshall College was established at 
Mercers burg in 1836, under the patronage of the German Reformed 
Church, for the same end ; and it is not too much to affirm, that its 
energies have been faithfully and successful^ devoted to this object 
from first to last. It has aimed to be an Anglo-German Institution, 
and to adapt itself in this respect to the genius and wants of Penn- 
sylvania, as well as of other parts of the country in which the 
English and German elements are similarly united ; and in the 
prosecution of that end, it has steadily refused to be a cop}' or 
echo simply of systems of thought elsewhere established, which 
might cany in them no reference whatever to any such order of 
life. Having this character, and pursuing this course, the college 
has, in fact, done much, during the comparatively short period of 
its history, to encourage and promote a proper zeal for education 
in German communities, as well as to show how much of promise 
for this cause is contained in our American German mind, just so 
soon as proper pains may be taken to turn it to account. 

" The whole worth and weight of this moral character and prop- 
erty, including the favor of its Alumni and other pupils at this 
time widely scattered over the land, together with the perpetual 
patronage and support of the German Reformed Church, pass over 
now along with the college itself to the new institution now estab- 
lished in Lancaster. 

" Finally, we have much to augur in favor of this new institution 
from its own location. In any view Lancaster offers a fine situa- 
tion for such a seat of learning. Its immediate local advantages 



Chap. XXXVII] Lancaster city and county 453 

are too well known to require any notice or mention. By its posi- 
tion, in the midst of the new facilities for travel and trade, which 
are opening on all sides, it is easy of access from all quarters. 
Especially may it be regarded as in this view likely soon to become 
the very heart and centre of the Reformed Church, and of what may 
be termed the* German region of the Middle States. A college of 
good character established here can never fail to be in full sight of 
this broad and ample territory, and to command more or less of 
its attention and respect. But it would be hard to name any place 
at the same time, which might seem to have less need or occasion 
to look abroad in this way for encouragement, in the case of any 
such enterprise. The city and county of Lancaster ought to be 
considered a host in themselves, most fully sufficient for carrying 
it forward alone, if that were at all necessary. The county for 
size, population and wealth, might pass respectably for an inde- 
pendent State ; and if the cause of education within it stood in any 
sort of proportion to its prosperity in other respects, it would 
be found to require no doubt, as it would abundantly sustain, a 
nourishing college simply for its own use. No such patronage 
indeed is to be asked of it, or expected from it now. The time for 
that has not yet come. But who will say, that it may not come 
hereafter, or that it may not begin to come soon ? 

" Let the enterprise only prove true and faithful to what we have 
now seen to be the object which should be aimed at in a system 
of education for this State; let it be carried forward vigorously in 
the spirit of the idea, which would seem to be prescribed for it by 
all the conditions in the midst of which it starts; and we see not 
how, with these favorable auspices and omens, this field of oppor- 
tunity and promise, it should fail of being crowned with the 
largest and most triumphant success. — Let us accept as an 
omen and pledge of this the public welcome with which the arms 
of the community are thrown open to receive the institution into 
their midst on the present occasion. The whole State knows, we 
might almost say the whole world knows, that if the city and county 
of Lancaster see proper, Franklin and Marshall College may soon 
be made the ornament and glory, not only of this city and county, 
but of the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And who will 
pretend, that the ambition and zeal of this old German community, 
now rolling as it does in wealth, would not be well and worthily 
laid out, if they were turned in fact towards the realization of so 
grand an object? — Lancaster should either have no college at all, or 
else one that may be in all respects worthy of the name. 



454 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

"It is a case that involves, to no small extent, the honor and 
credit of the German name. It is such an opportunity as may 
never occur, we believe never will occur again, under auy other form, 
for making this name respectable, and for securing to it its just 
rights, in the educational history of Penns3 T lvania. Let the coun- 
ty see to it, that the opportunity be not neglected, and in the end 
lost. And let it be the ambition of the cit} T to do faithfully its 
part also in building up an interest, which may be made externally 
as well as morally to redound to its embellishment and praise. The 
most beautiful location in the immediate vicinity of the town has 
already been secured for the institution, with ample room for all 
improvements that may be required for its service and accommo- 
dation. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if so commanding a sit- 
uation, exposed from all sides to the widest public view, and look- 
ing out continually upon the world of travel that passes by, should 
not be occupied in proper course of time with buildings and ar- 
rangements worthy of such a position, and fit to appear as the 
standing advertisement of what is destined to become hereafter, 
we trust, so great a college. I beg leave, in conclusion, to com- 
mend this point in particular to the attention and care of the city. 
It concerns the taste and pride of the city upon its own account." 

At the first Commencement of the College at Lancaster, after the 
Formal Opening, Dr. Nevin was requested by the Board to preside 
and confer the degrees on the graduating class. On this occasion 
he availed himself of the opportunity of delivering a Baccalaure- 
ate Address, full of earnestness, affection and paternal solicitude 
for the students, which were the growth of days and years in the 
past. Space here allows us to give only a few of its admirable 
thoughts. His theme was "Man's True Destiny," and in seeking 
to point it out, he proceeded in his discourse to show that the true 
destination of man, the proper end of his being and life, lies be3*ond 
the present world in an order of things which is supernatural ; and 
that it is absolutely necessary that he should know this, and have 
supreme practical regard to the fact, in order that he niay not live 
in vain. In harmony with the gravity of his subject, he prefaced 
his remarks with an invocation that the Spirit of all truth and 
grace might so hallow the naturally sacred associations of the oc- 
casion, that the} T might serve to fix deeply and lastingly on the 
minds of the students, and all others, the living force of this one 
single thought, so that in the future it might be the pole-star of 
their existence, lighting it, till life should end, onwards and upwards 
always to the glorious immortality of the saints in heaven. 



Chap. XXXVII] first baccalaureate address 455 

" The necessity of owning a supernatural destiny for man," said 
the reverend instructor to many attentive listeners, amidst a season 
of festivity, "lies to a certain extent in his natural constitution 
itself, in the relation he is seen and felt to bear to the world around 
in his present mortal state. This relation, in one view, is of the 
most close and intimate kind. The organization of the world, as a 
sj^stem of nature, comes to its completion in his person. This is 
signified to us very plainly in the Mosaic account of creation, 
where the whole magnificent process, rising gradually from one 
stage of order and life to another, is represented as reaching its 
climax finally on the sixth day in the formation of man, when God 
said : ' Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and 
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' Man is thus strictly 
the perfection of nature, the crown of its glor} T , the very centre of 
its light. 

"But for all this, or rather we may say for this reason, the life 
which belongs to man in the order of nature is for him always 
something incomplete, a form of existence which manifestly does 
not find its full and proper sense in itself, but needs and seeks this 
continually in some higher and different constitution of things. — 
But man is himself, as we have just seen, the end of nature, the 
point where its whole process reaches its ultimate destination. 
How then should he find in it his own destination or end? — The 
world, as a system of nature, completes itself in him, becomes in 
him a moral world, a world'of intelligence and active will, in order 
simply that it may, through him, become linked, under such form, 
with another economy far more glorious than itself. Without such 
object and end, it must be regarded as an insupportable vanity. 

"And is it necessary to add, that what is in this way continually 
proclaimed by the general constitution of the world, finds its full 
echo in the moral nature of man himself. Whatever relation his 
intelligence and will may bear to the present world as such, they 
carry in their very constitution, at the same time, no less distinctly, 
a necessary reference also to something beyond this world, to a 
higher economy, which is felt to extend over it in the form of truth 
and law, in which alone is to be sought and found its highest and 
last end. 

" But it is in the sphere of religion and conscience, especially, that 
the necessary relation of man's life to an order of things which is 
above and beyond nature, so far as his own consciousness is con- 



456 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

cerned, comes most of all to view. Whether the religion be true or 
false is of no account as regards this point. — For the sense of re- 
ligion in some forms is as universal as our human nature itself, 
and forms an inseparable part of its constitution ; and it includes 
eveiywhere, also, the assurance of its own legitimate authoritj^, and 
its right to be regarded as a supreme power in the organization of 
our life. — It is not trvpothetically or problematically only, but with 
a fall categorical imperative, that the chief end of man is referred 
here to another world, and that he is required to subordinate to 
this all other ends of a merely secondary account. 

" Such is the natural testiinoirv of the soul, with regard to its 
own destination. No force of error or corruption can ever reduce 
it to silence. It speaks in the individual conscience of every man. 
It is heard in the religious faith and worship of nations, and is 
handed forward as a sacred tradition from one generation to another, 
deep answering unto deep, as it were, in the vast and mighty abyss 
of the human spirit, and the voice of ages, like the sound of many 
waters, uttering itself forever in one and the same awfully solemn 
tone. 

"The world as it now stands, the cosmos whether of Humboldt 
or Kant, has no power, it is true, to affirm supernatural realities in 
their own proper form ; they lie over its horizon ; but it goes far to 
show negatively and indirectly their necessit}', and to turn the eye 
of expectation and desire towards the region in which they are 
found. Time alwa}^s points to eternit}\ Nature cries aloud for 
that which is higher, greater, and more enduring than itself. The 
world that now is, with man in the centre of it, is a riddle whose 
burden can find no relief except in the world to come. The whole 
moral and religious side of man's life especially proclaims, with un- 
controllable witness, his supernatural clestnrv and leads him to ac- 
knowledge his relation to the invisible and eternal through all ages 
and times. — This universal demand among men for religion in some 
form, both proves the reality of the supernatural relations on which 
the whole rests, and creates a presumption at the same time, not 
against, but powerfully in favor of any system which may present 
itself with the proper credentials of a true revelation. 

"But to give effect to this conclusion, the voice of revelation 
must be added to the voice of nature. The supernatural must 
make itself known, not as a notion or thought merely, but as an 
actual reality, comprehending in it the very end itself for which 
man is thus required to live. This has been done, as we know by 
the Gospel, which is to be regarded as a single revelation shining 



Chap. XXXVII] first baccalaureate address 451 

more and more 'as a light in a dark place' through the time of the 
Old Testament, until it burst forth finally with full effulgence in 
Him who is the ' Sun of Righteousness,' who, by the n^stery 
of His Incarnation, became Himself among men the full- mani- 
festation of the Truth under a living, personal form; who, by 
His Death and Resurrection, 'brought Life and Immortality to 
light;' and who reigns 'Head over all things to the Church,' a 
Prince and a Saviour at the right hand of God, to give repentance 
and remission of sins, redemption and eternal salvation, to all who 
draw near to God in His name. 

"The true destiny of man, the grand object and purpose of his 
existence, being thus not in the present world at all, but in an 
order out of it, above it and beyond it, and so in relation to it, 
supernatural, it becomes at once of itself plain, that no one can 
live to purpose, who does not know and acknowledge this end in 
its own proper character, so as to make it in reality the governing 
power of his life. It is not enough that we have been created for 
such end, nor yet that we may see and feel the necessity of it, as, 
on our part, something beyond this world. The case calls for pur- 
pose and will, in an object which is known to be real. This comes 
before us here in the form of a supernatural revelation, brought to 
its full accomplishment in Christ; and the power, by which we are 
set in actual communication with it, is what we denominate faith. 

"This then is the summit of all education, the perfection of 
knowledge and wisdom, that a man should comprehend and practi- 
cally pursue the true end of his being, by seeking first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness. It is so, because it serves to bring 
into the soul at once order, harmony, light, freedom, and strength, 
by setting it in right relation to the law of its own life. All things 
are beautiful and strong in their place, only as they obe}^ the law 
of their nature, stand in their appointed sphere, and fulfil their 
original destination; and so man, as made at first in the image of 
God and formed for immortality, can never be true to himself in 
an}' stage of his existence, in any sphere or department of his life, 
except that he is brought to live supremely for this supernatural 
end and no longer. This is for him emphatically the Truth, the 
fundamental reality of things as they are and ought to be, in the 
apprehension of which as a living fact consists the idea of all 
Wisdom rightly so called. 

" How easy it is to see, that the smallest measure of understand- 
ing in this form is of infinitely more worth than the largest stores 
of learning or skill in any different view. — We have no right to 
29 



458 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

undervalue education and learning ; and I have no disposition to 
do so certainly on the present occasion ; but we must not shrink 
still from seeing and owning here what is, after all, but the simple 
truth; namely, that no conceivable amount of such culture can 
deserve to be placed for one moment in comparison with an inward 
habit of piety, which consists in fearing God and keeping His com- 
mandments. Without this, the greatest philosopher is less wise in 
fact than the unlettered rustic to whom it may belong. The science 
of the saints is something far higher than airy mere learning of the 
schools. 

" The whole subject reveals to us the nature, necessity, and value 
of Faith. The chief end of man, the last meaning of his life, is not 
found, and is not comprehended in the present order of things, the 
passing diorama in the midst of which he is here carried forward to 
the grave. — Opinion, speculation, dreamy sentiment, in the case, are 
not enough. The world in question is not made up of negatives 
simply and abstractions, but of facts, realities, and actual living 
relations, which need to be apprehended as the}' are, that we may 
be saved by the sense of them from the vanity of our present life; 
and this precisely is what is accomplished for us hy faith. Facts 
here must always go before intelligence and thought ; and knowl- 
edge must follow faith. We see then the nature of this faculty. 
It is the power of acknowledging the supernatural, the miraculous, 
the real presence of possibilities, and powers, and actual operations 
that go beyond the resources of nature and surmount all its laws, 
in a new order of life, which is made to be actually at hand in the 
mystery of the Church, through the Death, the Resurrection and 
the Glorification of the Son of God. 

" It sets us in real communication with things unseen and eternal, 
and makes it possible for us to have such regard for them as we 
■ought, in working out the fearfully solemn problem of life. It is 
not the product in any way of reason or logic. These so far as 
the}' are concerned with natural things, or with the order of the 
present world, have no power to reach the supernatural; and so far 
as the}' may be capable of being exercised on this also, when known, 
they have no power ever to originate an} T such knowledge. Facts 
here, as always, must go before intelligence and thought, and knowl- 
edge must follow faith. The case speaks for itself. On the neces- 
sity and importance of this sublime capacity, this faculty of believ- 
ing realities which transcend and confound sense, more need not 
be said. 

"Well might that great student of nature, the late Sir Humphrey 



Chap. XXXYII] first baccalaureate address 459 

Davy, tired out with her same everlasting response to all the ques- 
tionings of science, It is not in me! It is not ivith me! make the 
memorable declaration towards the close of his life, 'that he envied 
no man any other possession whatever, such as wealth, learning or 
worclly distinction, but would cheerfully give all for the one simple 
privilege of being able to believe firmly and steadily the realities 
of another world. That, indeed, is something better than all 
knowledge, and power, and riches, and glory besides.' 

"You need this habitual, practical sense of the supernatural, that 
you may not walk in darkness and miss the true end of life, re- 
garded as a purely private and personal interest. But you need it 
no less, in order that you msiy be able rightly to understand the 
living world around you, and so be prepared to act a right part in 
it in your generation. The very idea of a liberal education forbids 
the thought of its being devoted to merely selfish purposes, under 
the low base form particularly which these carry with them for the 
most part in the present world. It is degraded, profaned, and 
made grossly vulgar and illiberal b}^ every association of this kind. 
But to live for the world really and to purpose, we must have 
clearly before our minds its true constitution, the actual meaning 
of it, the fundamental law of its being, its absolute destination and 
end ; just what we need, in one word, in the case of our separate 
personal life, that it may be ordered wisely and with true effect. 
Self-knowledge here, and the knowledge of the world complement 
each other, and go hand in hand together. 

" The spirit of the age is always at war in reality with the actual 
truth of things, as we find this exhibited in the Gospel and in the 
Church. It directly or indirectly seeks to pass itself off as an angel 
of light, 'flying in the midst of the heavens, and having the ever- 
lasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, to every 
nation, kindred, and tongue, and people.' In its general character, 
however, it remains just what the same power has always been over 
against the true Kingdom of Christ. It has no faith in the super- 
natural, except as this may be brought to resolve itself into some 
sort of gnostic abstraction or dream, in which form it professes to 
hold it in high account, taking credit to itself in so doing for its 
own spirituality. But its spiritualit}^, alas, always ends in mere 
spiritualism, the working of the simply natural mind pretending to 
soar above its own sphere of the Flesh, but never getting out of it 
in fact. 

" For the Spirit, in the sense of the Gospel, the supernatural un- 
der a real form, the Mystery of the Creed and of the Church, this 



460 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

eminent^ spiritualistic spirit of the age has no sense or organ 
whatever. It eschews all that, and holds it in abomination. The 
notion of the real presence of spiritual powers in the Christian 
Church for supernatural ends, involving as it does, necessarily, the 
subordination of the whole order of nature to a higher economy 
that can be apprehended only b} T faith, is precisely that which it 
has no power to endure ; and the presence of which, wherever it may 
come seriously into view, proves always to be for it like the touch 
of Ithuriel's spear, causing it to start up instantly in its true anti- 
christian shape. 

" If you would understand your duty to the world and be able 
to live for it to am T purpose in your generatiou, it is necessary, 
first of all, that you should cultivate a firm and steady faith in the 
reality of its supernatural relations, and have regard continually to 
the destiny of man as formed for a higher stage of existence. The 
smallest measure of faith here is of more value than an} r amount of 
useful knowledge. Education is no blessing, but only a curse to 
society, if it be not based upon religion, and animated throughout 
by the sense of its supreme authority in some positive form. Not 
to see and feel all this, is itself a species of infidelity, which opens 
the tv&j for the worst disorders and mistakes. It is to set the nat- 
ural practically above the supernatural, which is to den}^, in fact, 
the reality of the last altogether. It is to make humanity in and 
of itself, as it now stands, sufficient for its own ends, which is such 
a lie as overthrows the whole Gospel, and necessarily turns into 
caricature all truth besides, Irr forcing it into false relations and 
proportions. Hence the universal affinity in which this st3 r le of 
thinking is found to stand with all sorts of rationalistic specula- 
tion, sectarian fanaticism, radicalism, socialism, and wild revolu- 
tionary republicanism of the most openly antichristian stamp. 
Here we have in truth the veritable Antichrist of the present age. 
Learn to know him and to be aware of his devices. If 3^011 are to 
live wisely for your generation, it will depend much, very much, 
on this one counsel well kept in mind. 

" Finally, to return again in conclusion, to what is more directly 
concerned in the application of our theme, let me exhort you all to 
be true to 3^0111* own proper destination, 03- seeking each one of 
3 7 ou, for himself, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. As 
it was once said 03^ a distinguished artist, to account for the pains 
he took with his work, I paint for eternity, so let it be 3-our care 
also, to live seriously and earnestly not for the world, which is now 
passing awa3 T , but for that which is to come. — Here is an object 



Chap. XXXYII] first baccalaureate address 461 

worthy of 3^0 ur highest ambition and most active zeal, in comparison 
with which the most dazzling visions of glory in this world are of 
as little worth as so much dust or chaff. — Meditate on your personal 
destiny. It has been well said, that the thought of eternitj^, brought 
home to the soul from day to day, is for every man the thought of 
all thoughts, which, if it does not make him wise, must show him 
to be mad. 

" It is a volume of wisdom comprised in a single word. Read it 
much, I charge you, and study it well. Read it through the living 
commentary of that illustrious cloud of witnesses, apostles, pro- 
phets, martyrs, confessors, saints of all ages and climes, whose faith 
has already received its reward, and who now from their heavenly 
seats look down upon you with unceasing interest, and kindly 
beckon you to follow them in the path by which they have been 
conducted to eternal glory. Read jt above all at the foot of the 
Cross, where in the person of Him, who is the Way, the Truth and 
the Life, nailed upon it, crowned with thorns, covered with His 
own blood, and overwhelmed with reproach and contempt, the true 
sense of this world and the true sense of the next, the nothingness 
of the one and the infinite importance of the other, are brought 
into view as they could be by no representative besides." — Thus 
ended this remarkable Baccalaureate Address, or as it might. have 
been styled, this Baccalaureate Sermon. Amidst the gaieties of the 
commencement, it was listened to with the profoundest respect by 
the assembled Alumni, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, undergrad- 
uates and others. It was regarded as the most inspiring feature of 
the occasion, and all believed that they had received something 
valuable to carry with them to their homes. The words spoken 
were felt to be what were proper to be uttered by one who had come 
out of his seclusion from the world to address his former pupils. — 
See Mercer sburg Review, November Number, 1853. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

AS we shall see further on the subject of a new Liturgy for the 
-£j- Reformed Church engaged to a large extent the attention 
of Dr. Nevin during his retirement. He addressed himself to it 
with much earnestness, and studied it profoundly. Out of this grew 
his faith in the Church Year, to which he gave expression in an 
article in the Mercer sburg Review, which is here given to the reader 
without abbreviation. •' 

The idea of a sacred or ecclesiastical year is not something pe- 
culiar to an} r particular people, or time. It grows forth naturally 
from the religious constitution of man, and reveals itself spon- 
taneously in his religious histoiy, among all nations and through 
all ages. Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, show themselves 
here of one mind and feeling. All alike seek to link themselves 
in this wa} T with the course of nature, by bringing it into stand- 
ing connection with the high sphere of religion under their 
own several forms. The only difference is in the order and quality 
of the spiritual conceptions, with which the} 7 are severally occupied 
and emplo3 T ed. These, as they nnvy be of a higher or lower grade, 
condition necessarily the way, in which the idea in question may be 
reduced to practice. But the idea itself is of universal authority 
and force ; and if, in any case, it be hindered from coming into view, 
it must always be with some measure of violent restraint put upon 
the religious life of the communities in which such exception may 
prevail. The unnatural and artificial here have place, not in seek- 
ing to join the solemnities of religion in this wa}^ with the circling 
course of the year, but in affecting rather to dispense with all such 
conjunction as something superfluous and vain. 

The general ground of this is easily explained. It lies in the 
close necessary connection, which holds universally between the 
spiritual life of a man and the constitution of nature. Two worlds, 
two different orders or spheres of existence, are joined together in 
man's person. He is composed of bod} r and spirit. In virtue of 
his spirit, he is above the whole sj^stem of mere nature and beyond 
it, possesses in himself a life which is no product or continuation 
simply of its powers, but the result of a new and higher principle ; 
and looks to his ultimate destination in an order of things, to which 

(462) 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 463 

plainly it is intended to minister only as a scheme of transient pre- 
liminary preparation. On the other hand, however, he is just as 
truly and really for the present, comprehended by means of his 
body in this same system of nature, as the very home of his being. 

Its entire organization comes to its last sense, completes itself in 
his person. The material creation culminates in man, as the point 
towards which all its powers struggle from the beginning, and 
whose presence alone serves finally to impress upon its manifold 
parts the unity, roundness, and symmetry of a common whole. He 
is thus the highest and most perfect birth of nature, the full efflor- 
escence of its inmost life. Its powers reach him, and affect him, 
on every side. In this way his whole existence, spiritual as well as 
physical, is rooted in the natural world around him, and con- 
ditioned by it continually, from the cradle to the grave. For the 
two parts of his being, spirit and matter, mind and body, are not 
united in a merely outward and mechanical way. They flow to- 
gether in the constitution of a single life. Hence the material or- 
ganization underlies the spiritual throughout, supports it, enters 
into it, determines more or less its entire form and complexion^ 

Mind, in the case of a man, is never a power wholly abstract and 
free from matter; it is always, in a most important sense, derived 
from and dependent upon the body. The true relation between the 
two requires, indeed, that this last should be ruled by the first, as 
the higher power; that the material organization should be in the 
end so taken up by the spiritual, as to pass, in some sense, over to 
this out of its own sphere ; and that the body should be glorified into 
full harmony with the superior nature of the soul. But still, with 
all this, the soul can never free itself absolutely from the power of 
the body. Such is the law T of humanity. However it may be with 
other intelligences, man is made up of both matter and spirit. His 
whole being is conditioned by the natural basis in which it starts, 
and from which it continues ever afterwards to grow; just as the 
plant which blooms towards heaven, draws the quality of its leaves 
and flowers at the same time from the soil that secretly gives nour- 
ishment to its roots. Primarily and immediately, this natural basis, 
for every man, is his own body. But as we have just seen, the 
human body is no separate and isolated existence in the world of 
nature. 

The world of nature is a system, a single grand whole, bound 
together in all its parts, and looking from all sides towards a 
common centre; and this centre is precisely man himself, in his 
material organization. To be dependent on the body, then, is to be 



464 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

dependent also through this on the general s} T stem or constitution 
in which it is thus centrally comprehended. Mind, modified and 
conditioned by its union with the body, is in fact necessarily also 
mind modified and conditioned, in its universal existence, by the 
whole world of nature to which the body belongs. Man stands in 
sympathy and correspondence with the material universe on all 
sides. It acts upon him continually through all his senses. It 
gives form to his affections and color to his thoughts. In his 
highest flights of intelligence, he owns still its authority and pres- 
ence. It surrounds and pervades his spirit at every point, and 
forms the ver}~ element in which he lives, moves, and has his being. 

Such is the general law of correspondence between the inward 
and outward sides of our existence in the present world, between 
the higher life of the soul in man and his lower life in the body. 
We feel the force of it every hour, in the influence which is exer- 
cised over us by the forms of nature as they surround us in space. 
Skies, mountains, seas, plains, forests, rivers, enter into us, and be- 
come part of our spiritual being. All natural scenery, in one word, 
js educational. Our interior life is conditioned by it in every stage 
of its development. Our thinking and feeling, from first to last, 
owe to it a large part of their peculiar character and form. 

And what is thus true of nature as a system existing in space, is no 
less true of nature as a system existing in the continual flow of time. 
The changes, movements, revolutions, and periods, through which 
the world is continually passing, connect themselves with the 
economy of our inward being, no less really than the material ob- 
jects which are perpetually subject to their law. Days, months, 
years, and cycles of years, carry with them a plastic educational 
force for the human spirit, fnlly as profound and far reaching, to 
say the least, as any that is exercised over it bj T seas, plains, moun- 
tains, or skies. Indeed of these two forms of nature, existence in 
space and existence in time, it would seem that the last here must 
be allowed even to surpass the first in power. It lies nearer to the 
soul, and holds more direct affinity' with its spiritual constitution. 
It is bj T the sense of movement in the way of time especially, that 
the more outward sense of matter in space is etherealized and made 
to enter into the service of intelligence and mind. 

Our whole existence, spiritual as well as plrysical, is continually 
influenced in the most powerfnl manner by the course of nature, as 
thus measured by periods and seasons. We feel it in the succes- 
sion of clay and night. This is for us no merely outward index of 
time. It marks a law of regular revolution in our life, which cor- 



Chap. XXXYIII] the church year 465 

responds in full with what goes forward in the world around us. 
The force of this law shows itself in our souls as well as in our 
bodies, in the activities of our mind no less than in the pulsations 
of our heart. Day is the time for action, night for sleep. There 
are strong sympathies in us also with particular hours. We make 
inwardly the circuit of morning, noon, and evening. Midnight con- 
stitutes a crisis for our universal being. Diseases come and go, 
have their remissions and intermissions, at certain points of the 
orbit. Good health and sound understanding alike depend on prop- 
er conformity with the order, which God had been pleased thus 
to establish for us in the general constitution of the natural world. 
So too the revolutions of the moon have their effect upon our life, 
as well as upon the growth of plants or the ebb and flow of tides. 
And still more the grand period which is accomplished by the revo- 
lution of the earth round the sun. The year, with its four seasons, 
makes its full circle continually in man himself, as really as in the 
world around him. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter repeat 
themselves perpetually in the onward movement of his existence. 
Clouds and sunshine, all atmospherical changes, all the varying 
phases of nature, are mirrored in his consciousness and responded 
to by his inmost sensibilities, in the order of the rolling months. 
His existence is not just a continuous line in one and the same di- 
rection. It proceeds by cj T cles that are always returning upon them- 
selves. It is made up of years, which repeat themselves with per- 
petual recurrence in the progress of his experience, ever the same 
and yet ever new, from infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, 
and from manhood to old age. The year, it has been well remarked, 
is the most perfect and complete measure of time belonging to the 
earth. It is not merely a full revolution for itself in which the end 
comes back to the beginning, but it forms also a distinct whole in 
the organic process of all terrestrial life. In many cases this be- 
gins and ends with the annual circle; and where that is not the 
case, the circle marks at least a full round period in the process, 
which may ver} T fairty be taken as an apt representation and image 
of the whole. Each single year forms for every man a significant 
epitome, first of the several ages of his life, and then of his life it- 
self in full. Nothing is more natural, as nothing is more common, 
than the sense of this analogy. And thus it is that all the world 
over, men are led to look upon the year as the type and symbol of 
their universal existence upon the earth, and under such view seek 
to make it the vehicle and bearer of what is most inward and spiri- 
tual for their experience, as well as of that which is merely outward 
and physical. 



466 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

Here then we reach the proper conception of the religions or 
sacred year. Two ideas are brought together in it, which are ma- 
teriality different and yet closely related, religion and nature. Start- 
ing in nature, the life of man is required to complete itself in re- 
ligion, as an order of existence above nature, and involving rela- 
tions which go altogether be} T ond the present world. In the re- 
ligious year, all this is expressed hy an easy and natural s} T mbolism. 
The higher sphere is made to link itself with the lower, in such a 
wa} T as to show, at once, both the necessary connection of the two, 
and the proper subordination of the last to the purposes and ends 
of the first. Religion lets itself down, as it were, into the sphere of 
nature, in order to raise this into its own sphere. 

The lower constitution in this case is made to cany in itself the 
sense of the higher, in the wa} T of figure or t} T pe. Nature passes 
into an allegoiy of religion. We should err greatly, however, if 
we should imagine that there was nothing more here than a mere 
outward resemblance, arbitraril} T established by the wit and fancy 
of man. We have alreacty seen, that there is an inward, real cor- 
respondence between the spiritual and physical sides of man's be- 
ing; and that this last is organically comprehended, by means of 
his body, in the constitution of nature as a whole. From this it 
follows as a necessary consequence, that the entire physical order 
of the world must look towards the spiritual in all its parts, and 
find there always its last, most true and perfect sense. Could we 
understand in full the economy of creation, we should see the first 
of these spheres to be in its very nature a perpetual parable of the 
second. So it w^as evidently to the mind of Christ ; and so we too 
feel it to be, when listening to its most simple and yet most pro- 
found lessons, as interpreted under this view from His lips. It is 
by no mere figure of speech, no simply rhetorical metaphor or com- 
parison, that the forms of nature in space, or its powers in time, 
are taken to be significant of facts and truths in the higher world 
of the spirit. There may be much of mere fancy and conceit, much 
ignorance and blindness, in particular attempts to make out and 
express the full force of the correspondence at different points. 
But the correspondence itself is for all this none the less certain 
and real. The natural carries in itself an affinity with the spiritual ; 
tends towards it as its own proper complement and end ; and forms 
everywhere an adumbration of its invisible presence and power. 
So in the case before us, where the 3-ear is made to assume a sacred 
or religious form, by having the ideas or facts of religion lodged in 
its natural revolution, we are not to conceive of the relation as be- 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 467 

ing simply outward and artificial ; but are bound to see in it rather 
a real inward connection between the things which are thus brought 
together. In no other way can we do full justice to the subject, or 
be able to understand and explain the position it occupies in the 
actual history of the world. 

The existence of such inward necessary cause or reason, in the 
case, is at once established by the fact, already mentioned, that the 
notion of a sacred year is found to prevail among all people and 
through all times. It enters spontaneously, as it would seem, into 
the thoughts of men, and can be repressed and set aside only Iry a 
certain violence inflicted upon the spirit of religion itself. What is 
thus natural and universal can never be accidental merety or arbi- 
trary. It must have its ground always in the real nature of things. 
A sentiment or practice, in which all forms of religion come together 
with common agreement, cannot be absolutely false or without 
meaning. It cannot be an empty prejudice merely, or a hurtful 
superstition. Error and falsehood, perversion and exti^ivagance, 
may correct themselves with its use. But no such corruption can 
turn the principle itself, which may be thus wronged and abused, 
into a wholesale lie. They form rather part of the evidence, which 
goes to establish its truth. Back of all such wrongs, and abuses, 
this still stands firm and secure, as being by the universal consent 
of mankind something grounded in the religious constitution of the 
world itself, and so beyond all rational contradiction or doubt. 

The force of this in reference to the religious year becomes more 
striking, when it is considered that the universal consent in ques- 
tion reaches far beyond the mere general notion of making the year 
in this way a religious remembrancer, the bearer of religious 
thoughts and ideas. Were this all, we should find unbounded free- 
dom in the manner of carrying out the conception. There would 
be no fixed order or rule in the location of particulars, in the deter- 
mination of details. All would be at the mercy of fancy or caprice. 
Such, however, is not the way, in which we find this universal con- 
ception carried out in the actual practice of the world. The con- 
ception determines also, to a very material extent, the order and 
mode of its own reduction to use. It is not satisfied with having 
the year hung around with religious garlands and festoons, the 
ornamental imagery of a higher life, in a merely loose and ex- 
ternal manner. It involves always the supposition of some neces- 
sar}^ order and method, growing out of the correspondence of the 
natural and spiritual worlds themselves, according to which only 
the arrangement can be rightly carried into effect. It is assumed 



468 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

throughout, that the course of the year in time, with its revolviug 
material changes, serves to shadow forth in a real way the idea of 
a higher spiritual orbit, through which man is to be regarded as 
moving towards his proper destination in another world. 

Time is made to be the mirror thus of eternity. The visible is held 
to reflect the invisible. The lower sphere is felt to include in itself 
parabolicaliy the sense of the higher. The natural, accordingly, is 
not taken to represent the spiritual at random, in any and every 
way, but only according to a law fixed in its own constitution. This 
we see exemplified in the actual judgment and practice of the world. 
The natural year, all the world over, is made to underlie the relig- 
ious or sacred year, and to lead the way in determining its order 
and form. The relation between them is such, that the first refers, as 
it were, of its own accord to the second, and offers itself throughout 
as its proper utterance and expression. The ideas of the religious 
year are apprehended as having an actual representation in the facts 
of the natural year, as meeting in them their own picture or echo. 
Hence we have, in the midst of all that may seem to be confused 
and fantastic in the filling up of different forms of this spiritualized 
3 T ear, a certain uniformity of scheme at the same time that serves 
to impress on the whole a common character. The more closehr 
the matter is examined, the more clear it seems to become that 
these various forms are themselves in some way inwardly related ; 
the onty difference being that some are far more perfect than others, 
in the measure of their approximation to the truth, which all in 
their way propose to reach and express. This fact, still more than 
the mere universal notion itself of a sacred year, goes conclusively 
to show how truby and really the whole conception is grounded in 
the natural constitution of the world. 

Religion in the case of man, however, requires more than the sim- 
ple development of his own spiritual faculties and powers in what 
may be denominated the order of nature. It supposes, as necessary 
to its own completion, an order also of grace, a supernatural revela- 
tion descending into the bosom of the world in the form of actual 
history and fact. The absolute fulness of this revelation is reached 
at last in Christ, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge." In the form of promise, prophecy and type, it runs 
away back to the beginning of the world, preparing the way through 
the whole period of the Old Testament for His glorious Advent. 
Necessarily this system of grace, under such historical view, must 
be vastly more for the religious life of man than the system of na- 
ture; and it might seem, in one view, that the idea of religion thus 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 469 

based on what is above nature, and virtually opposing it as a power 
antagonistic to faith, would require no such union with it, and no 
such help from it, as is implied in the conception of a sacred or ec- 
clesiastical year; that its true interests rather would be much better 
consulted in every waj^, by separating it wholly from all such con- 
nection with the merely natural order of time, and joining it in 
thought and association only with the supernatural facts which are 
presented to us in the Bible, in their own higher order and form. 
But here three thoughts offer themselves to our view. 

First, these supernatural facts are themselves historical ; and hav- 
ing thus entered into the sphere of nature and time, they need to 
be held in permanent connection with this for our thinking, in order 
that they may be apprehended as facts, and not as notions merely 
or imaginations. Like all other historical events, they must have 
for us a local habitation in our sense of chronology, to be realities 
at all for our belief. This of itself at once leads to the conception 
of anniversaries, monumental solemnities, seasons of commemora- 
tion; to the conception, in one word, of an ecclesiastical or sacred 
year. It is in this way, great national facts perpetuate their force 
in the mind of a nation. Other forms of tradition, oral or written, 
are not enough for the purpose. They must be lodged monument- 
ally in the ever recurring circuit of the year, that grand image of 
all time, that proper epitome of man's life, both individual and uni- 
versal ; so as to be in this way reproduced and called up anew in 
the national consciousness, age after age. 

This gives us the idea of a political year; which is constituted, 
not just by a system of anniversary observances in memoiy of all 
separate events possessing national historical interest, but rather 
by singling out such events as are felt to be of cardinal and fun- 
damental account in the history of the nation, and making them 
to represent the whole. Without some arrangement of this sort, 
no true national spirit can be long maintained. But now the 
very same law which requires the great facts of political history 
to be kept thus alive, for the purposes of patriotism, requires 
just as much the great facts of sacred history to be kept alive in 
the same manner, for the purposes of religion ; and so we are 
brought here again to the idea of an ecclesiastical year, precisely 
as in the other case we come to the idea of a political year. As 
historical events, the facts of revelation need to be domiciliated 
fur our minds, in this way, in our natural sense of time. With- 
out this, they must ever be in danger of becoming for us mere 
shadows and abstractions. 



4*70 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

Secondly, whilst it is true that the order of grace, resting on 
revelation, is something far above the order of nature, resting upon 
the constitution of the present world, and that this last, regarded 
as a separate system, involves a certain opposition to the first ; it 
does not follow from this, by any means, that the two systems are 
in absolute contradiction to one another, and capable of no agree- 
ment whatever. On the contrary, it is certain, from the very nature 
of the case, that as different parts of the same creation they must 
be inwardly related, and closely bound together, in the harmon}^ 
of a common divine purpose and plan. The case demands not the 
destruction or exclusion of nature, not a Manichean fanatical hos- 
tility to its presence in any and every form; but its proper subor- 
dination merely to the authority of grace, as the sphere in which 
it is formed to find properly its own true significance and end. In 
such right order, nature appears no longer as the foe, but only as 
the handmaid of grace, and this relation too is found to be in no 
sense compulsory, but most perfectly free. The lower sphere 
shows itself to have been in truth created and formed for the 
higher. Nature becomes the prophec}^ of grace, its universal type 
and symbol. The two s} T stems flow thus easily and of their own 
accord together. There is no reason, therefore, why the facts of 
revelation, regarded as the ground of religion, should be taken to 
exclude or thrust out of sight the facts of nature in the same view. 

In the third place, the more we look into the subject the more 
we shall see that these two classes of facts do in very deed, as it 
were, run parallel the one with the other, so as most readily to ad- 
mit the harmony of which we have just spoken. So much might 
be presumed, as an a priori anticipation, on the supposition that 
both systems proceed from God. There is no room properly for 
the thought of such correspondence, in the case of an}^ simply na- 
tional or political year. Who would dream, for example, of setting 
the Birth-Da}^ of Washington, or the Declaration of American Inde- 
pendence, in airv sort of connection with the astronomical charac- 
ter of their anniversary seasons, unless it were in the way only of 
acknowledged fane*}" or conceit ? Ordinary national history is too 
narrow and partial an interest to be separately S3 T mbolizecl,in such 
fashion, by the constitution of nature. It can be so symbolized 
at best, only as it is comprehended in the general movement which 
represents the histor}^ of the world as a whole. The political year, 
accordingly, is not expected to fall in with the full constitution of 
the natural year ; it is enough, if it be brought sinipty to rest upon 
this as an outward and artificial arrangement. 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 471 

But with the religious } r ear the case is altogether different. This 
has to clo with the most universal of all human interests. Religion 
is for no nation as such, but for the whole world. The facts which 
underlie it historically in the form of revelation, are necessarily of 
the same universal and abiding force ; and we have a right to ex- 
pect, accordingly, that the constitution of nature, related, as it must 
be, to the destiny of man under the like broad view, should be found 
to include a certain inward correspondence with the order and 
course of these supernatural facts, as well as with the spiritual 
economy itself which they underlie. And what might thus be an- 
ticipated, we find to be in truth strikingly verified in the actual re- 
lations of the two systems. The main historical facts here have 
been so ordered, in the wise providence of Him who rules all things 
for His own glory, as to fall in chronologically with the very facts 
in nature which properly symbolize their sense and power ; thus 
rendering it perfectly easy to bring both systems into the con- 
struction of one and the same Church Year. It is easy to see 
how this goes, on the one hand to attest the truth of revelation, 
by showing its correspondence with the typology of nature ; while 
it serves, at the same time, no less clearly, to interpret and corrob- 
orate on the other hand the true sense of this lower sphere, as 
being, throughout, the terrestrial parable of spiritual and heavenly 
things. 

The sum and organic comprehension of the entire symbolism of 
nature comes to view in the Year, as being the completion of a full 
circle in the process of all earthty life. By being taken up into the 
sphere of grace, not only is the year itself glorified, but along with 
it, at the same time, the whole constitution and course of nature may 
be said to be glorified also, and sublimated into a new and higher 
sense. For the higher sphere, on the other hand, the relation in- 
volves the idea of a real victory or conquest, enlarging its rightful 
power. The sense of this expresses itself in the ordinary concep- 
tion of festival days. They carry with them the feeling of joyful 
solemnity, elevation above the common level of our earthly life, 
rest from the hard work-day character of our natural worldly exist-' 
ence in the bosom of a higher order of being, which is made to 
descend upon us by the power of religion. The ecclesiastical year 
becomes thus a sj^stem of sj T mbolical festivals; in which is cele- 
brated continually the true and proper relationship of the two econ- 
omies of nature and grace. 

Such is the conception of the religious year in its perfect form. 
As such, it must be of course, at the same time, the Christian Year. 



472 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

But it does not necessarily appear at once in this completeness. 
Rather it has a histoiy, a genesis, through which it reveals itself 
under various forms, rising from what may be considered its rude 
beginnings only to that which constitutes at last its absolute con- 
summation. Wide differences characterize these forms ; but through 
all such differences, they are still found to represent and express 
fundamentally the same idea of law. So much indeed is implied by 
the supposition of any real history in the case. The idea of a relig- 
ious year, as we have before seen, is universal, a fact seated in the 
religious constitution of the world. Under all manifestations, ac- 
corclingty, it is the same force alwa} T s working in the same direc- 
tion. Its different forms are but so many different stages, in the 
progress of which, it is carried forward to its true ideal perfection. 

Regarded in this light, the sacred year falls, for our observation, 
into three grand historical types — Pagan, Jewish, Christian. To 
these the subject requires us now to turn our attention. 

In the Pagan religious year, we have the symbolical apprehension 
of nature in its most elementary and rude form. The visible ma- 
terial creation is felt to cany in itself the traces of its divine origin, 
and becomes to the consciousness in this way the sign and type of 
powers existing mysteriously behind itself, on which it is always 
dependent and whose presence it serves to reveal. But there is still 
no clearness in the perception; and so no power of stead} 3 - dis- 
crimination between the sign and the thing signified. Heuce the 
two are made to flow together, at the expense of the higher thought. 
Nature is confounded with the divine powers it represents, and 
superstitiously invested with their proper dignity and right. The 
divine, in this view, becomes earthly, as the earthly also is taken to 
be divine. 

It fares with the religious nature of man here, as in all other 
cases where it labors to fulfil its constitutional destiny, without the 
help of an objective revelation. The effort to do so proves an 
abortive nisus merely in the right direction, which terminates at 
last in an empty shadow, throwing the spirit helplessly back upon 
the sphere of nature, which it had thus vainly struggled to sur- 
mount. In all such cases, however, the abortion is not without its 
meaning. It shows w r hat the religious constitution of man univer- 
sally needs and seeks ; and becomes in this wa}- a testimony and 
argument for the truth, which it has no power to reach ; just as the 
blind force which turns and leads the roots of a plant towards the 
water, or its upward growth towards the light, shows its necessary 
relation to these elements, even before this may be established in 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 4T3 

fact. Such unsuccessful endeavors on the part of the religious 
spirit, in the sphere of Paganism, can never be more of course than 
sad caricatures of the Truth itself, as brought into full view by the 
glorious light of Christianity. But caricatures are still in their 
way correspondences ; and the old Greek Fathers, therefore, were 
perfectly right, in looking upon Paganism itself as a real prepara- 
tion in such view for the Gospel. 

We need not be disturbed at all, then, by any parallelisms it may 
seem to offer with Christianity. We need not shrink from owning 
them in their utmost force. We should be glad rather to meet 
them, wherever they may come in our way. They are just what 
we are bound to expect if Christianity be indeed the absolute truth 
of religion, that in which all its partial and defective manifestations 
come to their final end. What comparative anatomy and physi- 
ology are to the structure of the human body, or comparative psy- 
chology to the true idea of the human soul, that precisely compara- 
tive religion, as we may call it, or the scheme of religious systems 
in general, is to Christianity. If this stood in no agreement or 
correspondence with religion in other forms, we might well ques- 
tion its pretensions. They show themselves unquestionable, just 
because analogies of this sort do press upon it from every side, and 
find in it the universal and harmonious fulfilment of their own sense. 

The Pagan sacred year, through all its variations among differ- 
ent nations, proceeds always on the theory of a merely natural or 
physical religion. The relation of the sun to the earth is felt darkly 
to signify, and then in some way to actually involve, the higher 
spiritual destinies of the world, as well as its simply outward 
changes. The active and passive forces of nature, represented in 
this relation, are confounded with the notion of divine powers. All. 
becomes mythology, a play of the religious fancy, constructed on 
the basis of purely physical facts and changes. This may be clear^ 
seen especially in the Roman Heathenism, which is to be regarded 
as the last result only or falling together of all older Pagan relig- 
ions. It is throughout pure naturalism, based upon the movements 
of the astronomical or solar year. Its twelve superior deities per- 
sonify the system of the twelve months, the course of the year 
through the signs of the zodiac, the great leading changes wrought 
by the sun, during this period, in the life of the earth. We have 
no room here to follow out the correspondence in its details ; nor 
is it necessary. It is enough for our purpose to state the general 
fact. 

The equinoxes and solstices form the four cardinal points of the 
30 



474 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

process, and rule throughout the order of its S3^mbolism. The old- 
est Pagan years were made to commence in the Fall, equinoctially. 
The later Roman year, on the other hand, was solstitial, opening in 
the Winter. In both cases, however, the order and sense of the 
symbolism is substantially the same. It starts with the time, in 
which the powers of nature are shut up, as it were, in its interior 
economy ; the life of the earth in a state of deep slumber ; the 
strength of the sun in a great measure unfelt. Through the winter 
months, we have a struggle between the forces of darkness and 
light, resulting continually more and more in the triumph of the 
last. The heavens gain power. With the progress of Spring, this 
power descends into the air and earth, causing the whole sphere to 
wake into new life. In Summer the victory becomes complete. 
The sun culminates in the June solstice, and exercises universal 
dominion in the form both of light and heat. He shines as Mer- 
cury ; burns and thunders as Jupiter. The earth is made to teem 
with living spirit. Afterwards the heavens seem to bury them- 
selves in its bosom. All becomes fruit, harvest, vintage. Then 
follows a new equilibrium, and sort of second Spring, more spirit- 
ual than the first, in the grave form of Autumn. The process com- 
pletes itself as the fall maturity of terrestrial life ; which thus re- 
turns back again from its outward action into its own original 
stillness (the gloomy reign of Proserpine), only to make room for 
a new circuit afterwards under the same form. 

In all this, there was for the Pagan mind a reference to the gen- 
eral conception of religion; that is, to the idea of redemption, as a 
process of deliverance from the powers of darkness and evil, which 
are felt universally to press upon the life of man in this world. To 
be real, this process must begin in the soul, must be spiritual. For 
the natural religious consciousness, however, it has its mirror in 
the life of nature as set forth by the process of the solar year. This, 
unfortunately, has no power to bring into view the positive super- 
natural realities, through whose power alone it is possible for the 
symbolized idea to become fact. That requires the historical in- 
tervention of a higher life, in the form of revelation. Having no 
such help, Paganism could never make its escape, as we have seen, 
from the sphere of nature. Matter and spirit fell confusedly to- 
gether. All ended in a purely physical mythologj 7 ", of the most 
fantastic and barren kind. 

But shall we say, for this reason, that there is no connection 
really between the course of nature and the process of redemp- 
tion in its true and proper form? By no means. The Pagan 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 415 

feeling on this subject was right, although dark and confused. The 
enigma did not lose its sense, nor cease to be a real prophetical 
burden for the human soul, merely because it came to no true inter- 
pretation. There exists, we have good reason to believe, a real 
analogy or parallelism, between the natural year and the system of 
redemption, in virtue of which, the last is typified by the first 
throughout, in a way far beyond all simply fanciful conceit. This 
can be fully apprehended, of course, only where the system of re- 
demption itself comes fully into view; that is to sa} r , only in the 
full light of Christianity, the end and completion of religion in 
every other view. 

The Jewish religious year was of a vastly higher order than the 
Pagan. It was established by divine law, and rested immedietely 
on historical facts, miracles of grace actually wrought in the world, 
and serving to reveal in the bosom of nature the intervention of a 
supernatural life. What nature struggled in vain to reach and ex- 
press without revelation, was here to a certain extent supplied by 
its presence. With such higher character, Judaism necessarily 
stood opposed, at the same time, to the way in which the religion 
of nature was carried out by Paganism, involving, as this did, an 
apostasy which changed the truth of God into a lie and drew after 
it all the abominations of idolatry. . Its mission was to prepare the 
way, on the one hand, for the coming of Christ, and on the other, 
to turn the human mind away from nature, that it might be fixed 
upon itself and made to know its own need of redemption. Both 
these purposes called for laws and positive institutions. Nature 
was not to be set aside; it was still, with all its yearly changes, a 
manifestation of divine powers; but it must not be confounded with 
the notion of these powers themselves. The symbol must pass into a 
better sense, by being made an allegory of history, an image in the 
world of sense, representing Cod's actual dealings of grace with men. 

The peculiar^ of the Jewish year is, that it has not only yearly 
but weekly sacred days. It starts from the Sabbath, as the centre 
which rules and conditions its whole construction. It has yearly 
festivals also ; but they are made to hinge on the weekly institution, 
as the primar} r power. This of itself had a tendency to break the 
force of the simply physical year, as it ruled the religious thinking 
of the Pagan world; and contributed very materially, beyond all 
question, to raise the idea of worship out of the element of nature 
into a different and far higher region, that of history, God's super- 
natural conduct and providence, employed for the redemption and 
salvation of His chosen people. 



4*76 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

But with all this care taken to guard against perversion and 
abuse, regard was still had to the natural year, as being of itself in 
true harmony and correspondence with the life of religion in man. 
This appears at once from the fact, that the great annual festivals 
were made to fall in with those parts of the year precisely, which 
corresponded parabolically with their proper signification and 
sense. They were not founded directly on these ; all of them rested 
on grand historical facts, which they served to commemorate from 
age to age; but these, facts themselves had been so ordered, as to 
concur with the times in question. The epochs of history fell in 
wonderfully with the epochs of nature. The Passover, commem- 
orating the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Eg}^pt, an- 
swered in this way to the time when the whole Pagan world cele- 
brated the renewal of nature through the return of spring. So in 
like manner, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles, resting on 
the memory of other dispensations of God's favor towards the 
same people, had their significant analogies also in the positions 
assigned to them in the natural year, which it is hy no means diffi- 
cult to discover and understand. Have we ai^ right to look upon 
this as a merely accidental, and therefore unmeaning concurrence ? 
We think it must be plain to all, that we have not. It must be 
viewed as belonging to the plan of the world ; and goes to confirm 
what we have already said, that according to this plan a real orig- 
inal and necessary parallelism holds between the two systems of 
nature and grace, in virtue of which the first is to be regarded as 
everywhere adumbrating the sense of the second. 

True, the sacred year of the Jews was made to commence in the 
Spring; differing in this respect from that of Paganism, which 
dated from Autumn or the first part of Winter. But then the S3 t s- 
tem took no account comparatively of the period between Autumn 
and Spring. This suited the character of the Old Testament dis- 
pensation, under which the process of grace preparatory to re- 
demption lay back of the fact itself, in a sort of hidden mysterj', 
like the powers of nature during the reign of Winter. With the 
coming of Christ, this mystery clears into magnificent light. The 
process of redemption is found moving its course, first in His per- 
son, in order that it may break forth in the full victory of Easter, 
as a fact accomplished for the world at large. Here the mystery 
of Winter finds at last its proper spiritual meaning. The year of 
religion falls back again in its order, and is brought thus once 
more to commence where the year of nature also of right begins. 
Only the correspondence is now such as to light up the movement 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 4?7 

with celestial splendor from beginning to end. Nature appears 
transfused throughout with spirit and life. Grace reigns triumph- 
ant over all the months and seasons. 

This is the Christian Year. The universal character of Chris- 
tianity, as compared both with Judaism and Paganism, is fulfilment 
or completion. Judaism stood far above all simply natural religion. 
It was a system of revelation. It rested on supernatural history. 
Still it was only a relative and partial exhibition of the truth in 
such form, the shadow of blessings to come. For this reason, it 
could never do full justice to Paganism. It was the direct, broad 
contradiction of the wholesale lie into which this had fallen, by 
substituting mere nature for the proper idea of God ; but such 
contradiction had no power of itself to harmonize with their true 
end the principles and tendencies, out of whose corruption the 
falsehood sprang. There was, accordingly, an antagonism here, 
that called for reconciliation in a still deeper and more comprehen- 
sive sphere of life. In the fulness of time this appeared in Christ, 
the Word made Flesh. " He is our Peace," says the Apostle, the 
end of all previous discords ; the last full sense of man's relations 
to himself, to the world and God. In Him, Judaism was fulfilled and 
Paganism explained. Christianity is the absolute truth, in which 
both the types of the one, and the dark endeavors of the other, are 
satisfied and brought to rest. This general character appears in 
its universal constitution ; and so among other things embraces 
also the structure of its sacred year. Religion in the form of na- 
ture, and religion in the form of history, come here to a perfect 
understanding and agreement. The constitution of the world is 
sanctified, by being taken up into the constitution of grace. The 
year of religion is now truly and properly a Church Year. 

If the correspondence between the historical facts of Judaism 
and the course of nature be striking, as we have just seen, the cor- 
respondence between the great facts of Christianity and the same 
course of nature is more wonderful and instructive still; showing 
most manifestly the presence of a common thought in both, by 
which the one is to be considered a true type and figure of the 
other. Who in his senses can imagine, that no such significance 
attaches to the time of our Saviour's death and resurrection ; or 
that the festival of Easter has been determined thus by a fortuitous 
correspondence only, to the period of the A^ernal equinox? Who 
that thinks can fail to see in the Festivals of Ascension and Pente- 
cost a similar relation to the triumphant progress of the sun to- 
wards the summer solstice, and the changes which are brought to 



478 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

pass by it on the earth? And so much being allowed, who can 
have a right to consider it an empty play of fancy only, when the 
months going before Easter, from the beginning of Winter, are 
taken to sj^mbolize the process of redemption, as carried forward 
previously to that point in the nrrstery of Christ's own person; or 
when the months following Pentecost, on to the close of Autumn, 
are made to sj^mbolize in like manner the progress of the same 
work, as carried forward subsequent!}- in the life of the Church? 
In both cases, what a field for pious contemplation! Analogies, of 
the most interesting sort, thicken upon our view, just in proportion 
as we give the subject onr earnest attention. 

Our limits will not allow us to enter here into smy more particu- 
lar consideration of the organism or structure of the Christian 
Year. The object of this article has been merely to bring into 
view the general nature of the conception, and the grounds on which 
it properly challenges our religious respect. 

Those who fanc} T , that the use of any such scheme of worship is 
without reason or meaning, or who, it may be, permit themselves 
even to stigmatze it as an unprofitable and hurtful superstition, be- 
tra} T at once their own want both of earnestness and knowledge. 
There is in truth a deep foundation for it in the constitution of na- 
ture, and it falls in with the universal spirit of religion. Christian- 
it}^ differs from other religions here, only by passing be} T ond them 
in the fulness and perfection of its image. The feeling, which justi- 
fies and prompts the conception of a religious year, found nothing 
to counteract it in the coming of Christ, but much to favor it, much 
to assist and carried it forward in the right direction. The great 
facts of Christianit}- served powerfully of themselves to call it into 
exercise. The lively apprehension of them, which prevailed in the 
mind of the earl} T Church, made it impossible to avoid so natural 
an observance. The Christian } T ear, accordingly, is as old as the 
Christian Church itself. What an amount of interest do we not 
find clustering around the solemnity of Easter, from the earliest 
times! The idea of such a year, and its general outlines, leaving 
room of course for much filling up afterwards in its details, entered 
into the universal thinking of the Church, and conditioned the en- 
tire system of its worship, from the beginning. It did so, more- 
over, spontaneously, and by the necessity, as it were, of an inward 
law. It came not primarily b}- art and reflection, but grew forth 
rather as a natural product from the Christian consciousness itself. 

And so we may add, its true sense and force can never be fully 
measured by airy merely logical standard. It speaks, not just to 



Chap. XXXVIII] the church year 479 

the understanding of man, but far more to his feeling and heart. 
Its voice is for the deep places of the soul, where life reigns as a 
full power back of all partial forms of expression. Hence the au- 
thorit} r it has carried with it for the Christian world through all 
ages. Only since the Reformation has the attempt been made, not 
by Protestantism in general, but by a fragmentar}^ section of Prot- 
estantism, to set aside the whole conception and practice as a "relic 
of superstition," serving to encumber more than to assist the prop- 
er spirituality of Christian worship. But of what force can any 
such isolated judgment be, over against the* united mind of the 
Church in all past centuries, backed as this is, at the same time, by 
the religious constitution of the world, and by its religious history 
also, in the most universal view? The exception is too violent, too 
monstrous, we may say, to stand. 

Any attempt to set aside the proper Church Year, involves neces- 
sarily an attempt also to substitute for it some other scheme of 
religious solemnities, contrived to serve the same end; for there is 
a natural instinct or impulse here, which will not allow itself to be 
long absolutely disregarded. But no such scheme can ever carry 
with it anything like the same worth for the ends of religion. Ever}^ 
other scheme must be in comparison mechanical merely and super- 
ficial. All experience goes to show, that no system of Christian 
instruction, no method of Christian worship, can ever be so effec- 
tive for Church purposes, as that which is based on the proper use 
of the ecclesiastical } T ear. As it is always an unnatural, so it is 
always a poor and hurtful exchange, where this is given up in favor 
of any other arrangement ; and it is certain that no such new ar- 
rangement can be able to compete successfully, in the long run, 
with the infinitely more respectable authority of the older system. 

The principle of the Church Year is of vastly more consequence 
than is commonly imagined. It goes deep into the very heart of 
Christianity. So it must do, necessarily, if we have now taken 
any right view at all of its nature. There is a most intimate con- 
nection between the use of such a scheme of worship and the prac- 
tical apprehension of the great facts of Christianity in their own 
proper form. Puritanism, in this case, pretends to be more spiritual 
than the old Church faith, as it does also in so many other cases, 
by setting its worship above all outward forms and conditions. 
But such spiritualism is something very different from real spirit- 
uality. 

The difficulty with this whole habit of mind is its want of 
power to receive and hold the historical truths of the Gospel, 



480 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

not as ideas, merely, but as realities and facts. It is sadly in- 
fected throughout with the old leaven of Gnosticism, which is, ever 
in disguise, again nothing else but the secret virus of Rationalism. 
It is but the natural result of such character, that it should be un- 
friendly to the Church festivals, and to the whole idea of the 
Church Year; and so, on the other hand, it may be assumed, that 
this ancient system cannot anywhere go into general disuse or neg- 
lect, without serious loss to the true interests of religion, just in 
the direction of such Gnostic or rationalistic thinking. The sys- 
tem forms a necessary part of the churchly scheme of Christianity. 
Where it has fallen to the ground, there can be no right sense of 
the Church; no proper faith in the holy sacraments; no sound litur- 
gical feeling; no active sympathy with the grand facts which are 
set forth in the Creed ; and no firm hold on the abiding power of 
these facts, as an order of grace moving onward in sublime corres- 
pondence with the order of nature to the end of time. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

MUCH of Dr. Nevin's time during his period of seclusion was 
occupied in the study of the Liturgical Question and in the 
preparation of an Agenda or Liturgy for the use of the Reformed 
Church. The subject to him was somewhat new, and occupying 
much of his attention served to give a healthy direction to his 
thoughts. We here give a history of this movement with his rela- 
tions to it, and allow it to extend beyond the present chronological 
division of his life. 

At first the old German Liturgy, published in the Palatinate, Ger- 
many, in 1563, was in general use in the Reformed Church in this 
country, but being out of print copies of it became more and more 
rare. Church members seldom, if ever, saw it. In 1840 a new litur- 
gy, the work mainly of Dr. Lewis Mayer, was adopted by the Synod 
and recommended to the ministers for use, on stated occasions. It 
was, however, considered unhistorical, not based on older liturgies, 
and failing to give general satisfaction it served a good purpose 
only as the occasion for a deeper study of what a genuine liturgy 
ought to be. The progress of a strong liturgical tendency in Ger- 
many, more particularly in the Evangelical Church of Prussia, made 
itself felt in this country, most especially through Dr. Rauch and 
Dr. Schaff. The former said that a liturgy was u a work of art:" 
the latter said, "it was a growth from the inner life of the Church, 
in which one period or age teaches those that followed it how to 
pray." Such thoughts naturally took root, grew and bore fruit. 

In 1847, the Classis of East Penns}dvania, composed mostly of 
aged German ministers, requested the Synod of Lancaster to make 
arrangements to prepare another liturgy, which should represent 
more fully the spirit and animus of the Reformed Church. As 
this was felt to be a matter of great importance, it was deemed ad- 
visable on the part of the Synod first to ascertain the sense of the 
Church on the subject, and the whole matter was referred to the 
Classes for further instructions, before any step in advance should 
be taken. — At the Synod of Hagerstown, Md., in 1848, the Classes, 
with only one exception, reported in favor of an onward movement, 
and after a careful survey of the ground, and considerable discus- 
sion, the subject in all its bearings was referred to a committee, 
which was to report at the annual meeting the year following. 

(481) 



482 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

At the Synod of Norristown, in 1849, an elaborate report was pre- 
sented by the Rev. J. H. A. Bomberger, Chairman of the Committee, 
in which the general posture of the early Church, and of the Church 
of the Reformation, was set forth, together with a series of resolu- 
tions in favor of an immediate onward movement for the formation 
of a liturgy, suitable to the wants of the body represented by the 
Sjmod. The resolutions affirmed that the use of liturgical forms 
fell in clearly with the practice and genius of the original Protestant 
Church; that there was no reason existing in the state of the 
American German Church, at that time, to justify a departure from 
ancient usage ; that the Liturgy then authorized was inadequate to 
meet the wants of the Church, because, apart from other defects, it 
makes no provision for ordinary occasions of public worship; that 
whilst the older Reformed Liturgies are in general worthy of adop- 
tion, there is still need of various modifications to adapt them fully 
to the circumstances and wants of the times ; that the time being 
was as favorable for action in the case as anj^ that could be thought 
of in the future; and, that, accordingly, it was expedient to proceed 
forthwith in the work of providing for the Church a new Liturgj^. — 
With slight modifications, the entire report was adopted, and a large 
committee was appointed to proceed with the work, and report at 
the next Synod the plan of such a Liturgy as the interests of the 
Church might be supposed to require. 

The original Committee consisted of the Rev. J. W. Neyin, D.D., 
Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., Rev. B. C. Wolff, D.D., Rev. Joseph F. 
Berg, D.D., Rev. Elias Heiner, D.D., Rev. J. H. A. Bomberger, 
D.D., Rev. Henry Harbaugh, D.D., and the Elders, William Hey- 
ser, Hon. J. C. Bucher, Hon. G. C. Welker, and Dr. Caspar Schaef- 
fer. Subsequently Prof. Thos. C. Porter, P.P., Rev. D. Zacharias, 
D.D., Rev. S. R. Fisher, D.D., Rev. E. V. Gerhart, D.D., Rev. 
Thomas G. Appel, D.D , and the Elders, George Shafer, John 
Rodennnvyer and Dr. L. H. Steiner, were added to the Committee, 
substituted in the places of the members who had resigned or could 
not attend the meetings. 

Naturally Dr. Nevin became the mouth-piece of this movement, 
and in the November number of the Mercersburg Review, accord- 
ingly, he congratulated the Church that " so auspicious a com- 
mencement had at length been made in this high and solemn work." 
At the same time the reader of his article may see what his ideas 
were in regard to a genuine liturgy at that early day. 

"For two years past," he says, "the subject has been, in a cer- 
tain sense, before the mind of the Church, but in such a wa}^ un- 



Chap. XXXIX] the liturgical movement 483 

fortunately, that it has not been able to come to any fair and open 
discussion. There has evidently been a feeling of embarrassment 
in venturing to approach it, and a disposition to hold it at arm's 
length, which has thus far stood very much in the way of a just 
consideration of its rights and claims. In the meantime, the wish, 
that has thus been suppressed, has been gradually making itself to 
be more and more felt on all sides ; until at length it is found forc- 
ing its own way to the clear utterance, as it were, from which it 
had been so long previously withheld and restrained. The prepa- 
ration for a new Liturgy has been altogether more general and 
deep, it would now seem, than most persons before had imagined. 
The Synod at first was, by no means, clear in regard to its own 
mind. But discussion, once fairly set free, caused a whole world 
of fog to pass away ; and the body was taken with a sort of sur- 
prise, in the end, at the unanimity of its views and feelings, where 
it had so needlessly been haunted with the spectre of controversy 
and discord. The discussion has, in all respects, had a happy effect. 

"As the case now stands the door is thrown open for the most 
free discussion of the whole liturgical question. Not only is it al- 
lowed, but it is loudly demanded and required. It is not enough 
to follow a mere blind sense of want, or to obey a tendency, how- 
ever good in itself: we need a clear insight into our want, and a 
rational mastery over our movement. This cannot be done without 
much thought, much consultation and debate. It is not enough 
that the ministers, and some of the elders, should be satisfied; the 
case requires that the people, the churches generally, should have 
their views enlightened, their hearts disposed and prepared for 
what may be done. This is indeed one of the last cases in which 
any end is to be carried by management or trick. No one need 
fear discussion. 

" If we are to have a liturgy at all, it is of the utmost conse- 
quence that we should have a good one; and this requires, in the 
first place, a true and just idea of what a liturgy means ; and in the 
second place, some inward preparation for the use of one in its 
proper form. We have no right then, and nobody surely should 
have any wish, to prevent the most full and free study of the sub- 
ject in all its length and breadth, in order that if possible these 
necessary conditions of success, in so vast and solemn an enter- 
prise, may be duly secured. Let the subject be examined without 
prejudice, or deference to surrounding prejudice, or shy jealousy of 
any particular tendency ; as though such a thing might be allowed 
to hoodwink a whole Church out of its sober rationality, and we 



484 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

would forestall all that, and take care of its proper liberty by lay- 
ing a bridle on its neck beforehand, to keep it from going too far! 
The danger here is not in free inquiiy, but in the want of it. 

" What is most of all to be deprecated, is the formation of an 
unripe Liturgy; one that may fall behind the true inward demands 
of the interest itself, and fail, accordingly, to satisfy in the end the 
very want from which it springs. Everything here depends on 
starting right. Our Liturgy will take its character and complexion 
finally from the end it is designed to serve. If it is taken to be a 
mere outward help and convenience for public worship, a sort of 
crutch to assist the decent conduct of our sanctuary devotions, 
it is not to be expected that we shall bring to it anything better 
than such poor mechanical character. Better no Liturgy at all, we 
say from the bottom of our heart, than one produced from such 
a spirit and constructed on such a plan. If we are to have a Liturgy 
that is worth anything, we must seek it and accept it under a wide- 
ly different view. We must embrace it, not as a burden, but as a 
relief, not as a 3 7 oke, but as a crown, not as a minimum of evil sim- 
ply, but as a maximum of privilege and good. 

" The conception of a liturg}^ in the true sense, as compared with 
our reigning unliturgical and free worship, is the conception of a 
real emancipation into the liberty of the children of God. Argu- 
ment and debate here, that are not led by the idea of worship itself, 
but turn on other considerations altogether, whether they go for or 
against a liturgy, are of very small account; just as little worth, 
r in truth, as a controversy about Art to those who have never felt 
what Art means, and for whom all artistic creations are alike desti- 
tute of inward law and soul. Worship, like Art, has a life and na- 
ture of its own. It involves, in its very constitution, certain prin- 
ciples, elements, and rules, which must be understood and turned to 
right account, to make it complete. Any true analysis of the na- 
ture of worship, any resolution of it into its necessary constituents 
and conditions, we have no doubt at all, must bring us to see and 
feel that it requires a liturgy; and that a vast loss is suffered where 
it is violently forced to move under any less perfect and free form. 
All unliturgical worship is, to the same extent, incomplete and 
cumbersome. Nature itself is a divine liturgy throughout. The 
life of heaven is still more a liturgy, 'like the sound of many 
waters,' of the most magnificent and sublime order. What we 
need, therefore, in our present movement, is the full sense of what 
worship means under this view : sympathy, with the music of the 
spheres, and with the songs of the angels ; the same mind that led 



Chap. XXXIX] the liturgical movement 485 

the early Church into the universal use of liturgies, without oppo- 
sition or contradiction from any quarter, so far as history shows." 

The matter of a liturgy, thus candidly and fairly placed before 
the Church for consideration, led to considerable discussion, more 
in private than official circles ; in the former, it sometimes came as 
a grim spectre, proposing to carry the Church through the air into 
the Episcopal fold or into some other body still more dangerous. 
Two valuable contributions to existing liturgical literature ap- 
peared in the Mercer sburg Review during the year following : the 
one was a translation of the " Old Palatinate Liturgy of 1563 " by 
the Rev. Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger, of Easton, Pa. ; the other, a trans- 
lation, by Rev. Dr. B. C. Wolff, of several chapters on Public Wor- 
ship from the Introduction of Dr. Ebrard's " Reformirtes Kirchen- 
buch" which had just been published. — The Committee reported to 
the Synod in 1850 through Dr. Nevin, the Chairman, that they had 
not deemed it expedient to go forward with their work, and ex- 
pressed some doubt whether the time had as yet arrived to consider 
the question of a new Liturgy. Under the impression that the fur- 
ther prosecution of the work might lead to serious complications 
in the Church, if not its division — as was affirmed by some — the 
Committee recommended that the Synod fall back on the old Palat- 
inate Liturgy, publish it with some modifications for the use of 
the churches, and lay aside the idea of a new Liturg}- for the 
present. The report was received with due respect, but notwith- 
standing its discouraging character, the Committee was continued 
and instructed by the Synod to go forward with its work. — Dr. 
Nevin resigned its chairmanship, but continued as active as before 
in the capacity of a member. Dr. Scharf became the Chairman, and 
with his usual ardor and hopefulness infused new life and courage 
into the liturgical movement. 

During the year 1851 the Committee made little or no progress 
in the work, and were probably as yet at a loss to know exactly 
what kind of a liturgy should be presented to the Church for adop- 
tion. Accordingly, in order to find their way out of their perplex- 
ing situation, they asked for more definite instructions from the 
Synod that met in 1852 in Baltimore. Through the Chairman, Dr. 
Schaff, they proposed a plan, making provision for the various ser- 
vices or offices, which are generally comprehended in a regular 
Liturgy in the proposed sense of the term. They included a full 
service for the Lord's Day, and Lessons from the Scripture to be 
read in the churches throughout the year. In the next place, the 
principles on which the Committee thought the New Liturgy ought 



486 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

to be constructed were set forth m the report without reservation. 

" The liturgical worship of the Primitive Church," it said, " as far 
as can be ascertained from the Holy Scriptures, the oldest ecclesi- 
astical writers, and the liturgies of the Greek and Latin Churches 
of the third and fourth centuries, ought to be made, as much as 
possible, the general basis of the proposed Liturgy; the more so, as 
the} T in fact also are the source from which the best portions of the 
various liturgies of the sixteenth century were derived, such as the 
form of confession and absolution, the litanies, the creed, the Te 
Deuui, the Gloria in Excelsis, the collects, the doxologies, &c. For, 
the merit of the Reformation in the department of worship, if we 
except hynmolog3 T , did not consist so much in producing new forms 
of devotion, as in transferring those handed down from former 
ages into the vernacular tongues, in purifying them from certain 
additions, in reducing them to greater simplicity, and in subordi- 
nating them to the preaching of the Gospel, as the principal part 
of the Protestant worship. 

"If the principles, " saj r s the report, "are conscientiously and 
wisely carried out, it is hoped, with the blessing of God, a Liturgy 
might be produced, which will be a bond of union both with the 
ancient Catholic Church and the Reformation, and yet be the pro- 
duct of our own denomination in its present state. 11 — The report, em- 
bracing the plan and the summary of principles, was adopted b} T 
the Synod without airy modifications, and its closing suggestions 
approved : that a specimen Liturgy, for the inspection of the Church 
should be printed, as soon as the nature of the work would admit. 

The Committee, now clothed with ample authority, proceeded 
with their work anxiously and thoughtfully, making a gradual prog- 
ress from year to year, until at the meeting of the Sjmod of Allen- 
town, in 1857, when the}' had the pleasure of reporting that, accord- 
ing to its request, they had completed and published a Provisional 
Liturg} T for examination or optional use in the churches, styled, 
A Liturgy ; or Order of Christian Worship, published by Lindsay 
& Blakistou, Philadelphia, 1857. The report was adopted and the 
Committee thanked in very flattering terms for their services in the 
preparation of the work. It met with and gained an extensive cir- 
culation, a third edition being called for in 1858. The book was 
read, studied, criticised and generally received with favor as a help 
for both public and private devotion. 

The following general remarks of Dr. Schaff appeared in his no- 
tice of this New Liturgy in the April number of the Mercer sburg 
Review for the year 1858 : 



Chap. XXXIX] the new liturgy 487 

"Next to the Word of God, which stands in inapproachable 
majesty far above all human creeds and confessions, fathers and 
reformers, popes and councils, there are no religious books of 
greater practical importance and influence than catechisms, hymn- 
books, and liturgies. They shape the moral and religious senti- 
ments in early youth; they feed the devotions in old age; they are 
the faithful companions of the most solemn hours in the house of 
God, around the family altar and in the silent closet; they give 
utterance to the deepest emotions, the purest thoughts, the highest 
aspirations; they urge to duty and every good work; they comfort 
in affliction, and point to heaven at the approach of death. Even 
the ripe scholar delights to return from time to time, if not daily, 
to the first question of his Catechism, or a familiar verse, or the 
simple Lord's Prayer and Apostles' Creed, which his pious mother 
taught him when a child, on his knees, and derives more solid 
wisdom and substantial comfort from them than from a whole 
library of learned volumes. They embody his earliest and his 
deepest impressions; they remind him of his best moments; they 
are his sacred things ' which doubt has never dimmed and contro- 
versy never soiled; ' they teach him his ' only comfort in life and in 
death.' Luther did more good by his little Catechism and a few 
hymns than by all his twenty-four large quartos, save only his 
translation of the Book of books. The authors of the Heidelberg 
and the Westminster Catechisms exerted greater influence upon 
their age and subsequent generations, than all the schoolmen of the 
middle age by their subtle commentaries on Aristotle and Peter 
the Lombard. The author of the simple verse, ' Now I lay me down 
to sleep,' etc., was one of the greatest benefactors of children, and 
through them of the race. 

" It is difficult to say which of these three nurseries of the Church 
occupies the first rank. National and denominational differences 
must here be allowed their due weight. In Protestant Germany, 
which produced the richest hymnology in the world, and still ad- 
heres to the practice of congregational singing as an essential ele- 
ment of public worship, hymns have a power and influence as in no 
other land. The Presbyterian and Puritan Churches would no 
doubt at once give the Catechism and Confession the preference, 
and look upon liturgies with suspicion as tending to formalism. In 
the Episcopal Church, the ' Common Prayer Book' has probably 
done more to keep her together, to preserve her faith, to nourish her 
piety, to attach her membership, and to attract a certain class of 
foreign material, than all her bishops, priests and deacons. The 



488 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

best state of things would perhaps require the equal excellency and 
harmonious co-operation of the doctrinal and devotional standards. 
But we know of no denomination which may claim to have at once 
the best catechism, the best hymn-book and the best liturgy. 

"The German or Evangelical Reformed Church of this country 
has undertaken the difficult and responsible task of providing for 
its membership a new Liturgy or Director .of public and private 
worship. She did not seek it, but was providentially prepared for, 
and led into it. The book is now before the public, but simply as 
an experiment and for provisional use. The Committee which pre- 
pared it have no wish whatever of seeing it introduced into any 
congregation without their free and full consent. All they ask for 
their work is a fair examination and trial. In their final report, 
the}' requested Synod not to take an} T action at present either for 
or against the book. Its merits or defects can only be properly 
tested b} T practical experience in the family and the Church. It 
may require several years to settle the question of its aclaptedness 
to the wants of the denomination for whose use it has been pre- 
pared. 

" This is indeed a new method of introducing a Liturgj', and its 
practicability may be doubted. But if it be wrong, its fault lies 
not in the Romanizing, but in the Protestant direction, and should, 
therefore, give at least no alarm to anybody on that score. It 
makes full account of the general priesthood of believers. It ma}- 
be called a Republican and even a Democratic method, or an appli- 
cation of the popular sovereignty-principle to Church movements. 
If the ministers and congregations do not want the new prayer 
book, all they have to do is, to vote it down, and either to refer it 
back to the old committee for revision, or to order the preparation 
of a new liturgj 1 - on a different plan, or to drop the subject alto- 
gether and settle upon the exclusive sj-stem of extemporaneous 
prayer in the house of God as well as in the family. 

" But whatever may be the ultimate fate of this provisional liturgy 
as a public standard of worship, it has some significance even as an 
experiment. It is certainly one of the most important works which 
the German Reformed Church has attempted in this country. It 
represents a piece of her present spiritual life. It forms a chapter 
of her inner history and development. It is the practical result of 
a theological movement which has agitated her for a number of 
years past. It ma}- have considerable influence even beyond the 
pale of the denomination that gave it birth. For this liturgy, 
although defective, and admitting no doubt of considerable improve- 



Chap. XXXIX] the new liturgy 489 

ment, is by no means a mere compilation or patchwork, but some- 
thing of an organic growth. The stones are old, but the building 
itself is new. The book has a life and spirit of its own. It is an 
American product, grown up on American soil and intended for 
American use. It is at least an earnest effort to solve the vital 
question of the best mode of conducting public and private worship 
for the wants of the present age ; and that question will have to be 
met sooner or later by every Protestant denomination of this great 
and future-pregnant country. 

" The German Reformed Church, like all the Churches of the Re- 
formation, was originally liturgical. Zwingii, Calvin, Bucer, and 
even John Knox, as well as Luther and Melanchthon, Cranmer, 
Latimer and Ridley, were all in -favor of a fixed and settled order 
of public worship, that should serve as a guide to the minister and 
secure decency, dignity and harmonj^ to the exercises of the sanc- 
tuary. Their object was not to overthrow but to purify; to sim- 
plify and to adapt the ancient devotional forms which had been 
handed down from the previous life of the Church ; to transfer them 
from the Latin into the vernacular tongues; and to enrich them 
with new forms that should embody and perpetuate the peculiar 
spirit of evangelical Protestantism. Hence the great number of 
liturgies and sacred hymns, which sprung up in the sixteenth cen- 
tury during and after the pentecostal days of the Reformation. 

"But while agreed as to the liturgical principle even on ordinary 
occasions, the Protestants differed from the beginning as to the 
extent to which it should be carried. The Lutheran and the Angli- 
can Churches adhered more closely to the traditional Catholic order 
of worship, and allowed less room for free prayer in public than the 
Calvinistic Churches. A few extreme branches of CaWinism,. 
namely, Presbyterianism in Scotland and Puritanism in England, 
with their large offshoots in America, during the seventeenth 
century dropped the public use of prayer-books almost entirety. 
This can be easily accounted for by their extreme antagonism to 
the Church of England, by the unsatisfactory character of Knox's 
Liturgy, which never took proper root, and by the unwise and ty- 
rannical attempts of Archbishop Laud and the Stuarts to force the 
Anglican service upon the reluctant Scotch nation. In the course 
of time the anti-liturgical prejudices have in these ecclesiastical, 
bodies assumed the power of tradition, which it is very difficult 
now to overcome, especially in this country. But we have no room 
here to enter into a general argument in favor of liturgies against, 
their opponents. 
31 



490 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

"The Protestant Churches of the Continent are without excep- 
tion liturgical to this daj T , and make use of prescribed forms in 
every service in connection with more or less extemporaneous 
prayer. But they have too manj T liturgies, and consequently too 
little unity and harmonj^ in worship. These liturgies, moreover, 
are intended as guides and helps simply to the ministers, and not 
for the use of the people, like the catechism and lymn-book. And 
yet the Protestant doctrine of the general priesthood of believers 
should lead to some active co-operation of the congregation with 
the pastor in praying as well as in singing. Here are some of the 
reasons wh} T none of the Continental liturgies, either Lutheran or 
Reformed, has been able to take very deep root in the popular 
heart and to prove as successful as the Common Prayer Book. 
For the latter is truly a national institution, as strong and power- 
ful as Parliament itself; it has stood the test of three hundred years 
without serious alteration ; it is now as popular as ever, and extends 
further than ever. 

" The German branch of the Reformed Church uses a considerable 
number of liturgies in German} r , and in Switzerland where almost 
every canton has one of its own. Some of them are excellent in 
mam T respects, especially those which date in whole or in part from 
the sixteenth centuiy. But none of them, not even the old Palat- 
inate Liturgy, can be called at all equal in depth, fervor and power 
to the Heidelberg Catechism. None of them combines those merits 
which constitute a truly popular Church-book, and exempt it from 
the necessity of a revision in almost eveiy generation. But the 
same holds true of the Lutheran Church, which has as mai^ litur- 
gies in German}' as Germany has independent sovereignties. 

" This is one of the causes of the unsatisfactory liturgical condi- 
tion of the German Reformed Church in America, The missionary 
fathers of the last century brought with them the different liturgies 
then in use in those sections of Germany, Switzerland or Holland 
from which they emigrated. None of them ever received, as far as 
we know, the exclusive sanction of the Synod. Each minister was 
left to help himself as well as he could, and this in point of fact is 
the case still. The Palatinate Liturgy was used more extensively 
perhaps than any other. But it was superseded in German}^ itself, 
and never republished in this country. Hence only a few copies of 
the original are to be found even in East Pennsylvania. Several 
older ministers in that section of the Church have manuscript copies 
of some of the old Palatinate forms and use them to this da} T , while 
a few others prefer the German translation of Dr. Mayer's Liturgy. 



Chap. XXXIX] the new liturgy 491 

In addition to these, there are in use, especially among our foreign 
German congregations, several Swiss Liturgies, of Berne, Basel, 
Zurich, Coire, and Ebrard's Reformirtes Kirchenbuch. Such a di- 
versity and arbitrary freedom in public worship is certainly unde- 
sirable in one and the same denomination and leads to confusion. 

"In the course of the present century our Church was gradually 
anglicanized and in the same proportion also presbyterianized and 
puritanized to a very considerable extent. This influence showed 
itself in public worship by the gradual introduction of the free 
prayer-system in the regular services of the Lord's day. It grad- 
ually gained the ascendenc}^ and prevails now almost without ex- 
ception in our English congregations. But the Church never pro- 
hibited, of course, the use of liturgies even on ordinary Sundays, 
and always adhered to the liturgical principle for all special occa- 
sions and sacramental transactions. Here the same loose practice 
and arbitrary freedom have prevailed to this day, as in the German 
congregations. Some use the translation of portions of the Palati- 
nate liturgy as appended to the hymn-book of the Dutch Reformed 
Church; others, Dr. Mayer's; others, portions of the Episcopal 
Common Prayer Book; others, prefer to compile from various 
sources their own forms for the sacramental occasions, for confir- 
mation, marriage and the burial of the dead ; while still others go 
the full length of the Puritan principle and depend altogether upon 
their individual resources and the inspiration of the moment for 
all these solemn occasions. 

" This is the state of things which the Church has long in vain 
tried to correct and to regulate. For the last thirt}^ or forty years 
the Synod has agitated from time to time the liturgical question, 
with the view to do away with this loose practice and to introduce 
a settled and uniform system of public worship, both in the Eng- 
lish and German congregations under its jurisdiction, by means of 
a liturgy that should breathe the spirit of its doctrinal standard, 
the Heidelberg Catechism, and yet be adapted in arrangement and 
style to the wants of the Church at the present day and in this 
county in the midst of Anglo-American relations. 

"In the meantime, since the year 1844, this body began to be 
strongly agitated by a theological controversy known as the ' Mer- 
cersburg ' movement. It referred to the Church Question under its 
theoretical and practical aspect. It commenced with the discussion 
of the original and fundamental principles of Protestantism in its 
relations to Roman Catholicism, on the one hand, and to rational- 
ism and sectarianism on the other, and extended gradually over a 



492 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

considerable number of important historical and doctrinal topics, 
including the sacraments, the ministiy and the nature of public 
worship. It led to serious sjmodical discussions after the meeting 
at York, in 1845, in which the members of the new liturgical Commit- 
tee have in part occupied very different ground. As this movement 
is not yet closed, but in active, though more silent and peaceful prog- 
ress, it would be premature to pass a final judgment on its merits. 
The best in it is unquestionably its providential character, which 
justifies the hope that it will lead ultimately to good results, in and 
out of the denomination in whose bosom it was first started. We 
are here mereh~ concerned with its bearing upon the New Liturgy. 

" The Mercersburg controversy evidently did not originate the 
liturgical movement in the German Reformed bod}', as appears from 
the preceding statement, but it gave it a new impulse and direction, 
and carried it to a practical result that differed very widely from 
what was originally contemplated. It called attention to the litur- 
gies of the age of the Reformation and of the primitive Catholic 
Church, which had been almost entirely lost sight of in this country, 
and recommended them as the general basis on which the new work 
should be constructed. It placed, moreover, the defense of litur- 
gical service on different grounds. It viewed it not simply in the 
light of convenience, decenc} r and propriety, but as a sacred bond 
of union between the different ages of Christ's Church ; as a guar- 
antee against excesses of arbitrary freedom ; as a conservative power 
in doctrine and discipline; as the organ for the exercise of the gen- 
eral priesthood; and as the artistic form, which the very spirit of 
social worship instinctively assumes, and which will characterize 
even the worship of the redeemed in heaven as a complete harrnony 
of united thanksgiving and praise. 

" The friends of that S3'stem deprecated the idea of a liturgy that 
should be either a purely subjective and narrow denominational 
production, or a mechanical compilation from other sources without 
principle and vitality. Such a book would hardly deserve the name, 
and not be worth the trouble of preparation. They called for a free 
reproduction and adaptation of the time-honored devotions of the 
purest ages to our particular age and country. In one word, they 
desired a truly scriptural, historical. Evangelical Catholic and 
artistic liturgy for the people as well as the ministr}^. Whether 
this aim be at all attained in the new book, is an altogether different 
question. For, from the ideal to the real, from theory to practice, 
there is more than one step, and many of the noblest aims of mortal 
men remain pia desideria in this world of imperfections." 



Chap. XXXIX] the new liturgy 493 

In the article already referred to, Dr. Schaff gave some interest- 
ing reminiscences of the labors and toils underwent by the Com- 
mittee in completing this Liturgy, which we here subjoin. 

" The scheme and general principles adopted by the Baltimore 
Synod were conscientiously, yet not pedantically, adhered to by 
the Committee in their subsequent labors, as will appear from a 
comparison of the report with the book. — The Committee held sev- 
eral meetings more than were originally contemplated, one in 1856, 
four in 185T. • Each lasted from one to two weeks. The number 
of the morning, afternoon and night sessions, as I learn from the 
Secretary, amounts to one hundred and four, exclusive of the ses- 
sions of the Lancaster and Mercersburg sub-committees, and those 
preceding the Synod at Baltimore, The first four of these gen- 
eral meetings were held in Lancaster city, owing to its central loca- 
tion and its being the residence of several members of the Com- 
mittee ; the last was held in Philadelphia, in the midst of the late 
financial panic, and the proof was read as the book passed through 
the hands of the printer. The members will not easily forget the 
old fashioned round walnut table in the Consistory Room of the 
First Reformed Church at Lancaster, and the similar table in the 
equally comfortable Consistory Room of the Race Street Church in 
Philadelphia, one of the oldest in the city and in our denomina- 
tion, where once Schlatter, Hendel, Weiberg and other missionary 
fathers of pious memory labored in their generation. The Commit- 
tee sat many a day, praying, writing, consulting together, criticising, 
examining and pondering over Bibles, Concordances, Liturgies, old 
and new, from the Clementine down to the Irvingite, and 
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. 

" They applied the pruning knife very freely to their own pro- 
ductions and laid aside whole piles of manuscript. Human nature, 
unaided by divine grace, would hardly have submitted to such an 
unceremonious process. But the book, I am sure, is only the better 
for it. Almost every sentence and word was rigidly examined and 
measured. Sometimes interesting theological discussions would 
spring up and relieve the mind of the weariness of minute verbal 
criticism. The whole was a capital training school, and if the 
Committee could have recommenced their labors when they stopped, 
with the experience they had acquired, they would probably have 
made a much better book than the one now published. — The last 
meeting, consisting of five members, was held Wednesday, October 
21, 1851, at Philadelphia, and closed at 6 o'clock p. m., in a solemn 
manner b}^ prayer and the singing of a doxology." 



CHAPTER XXXX 

IN 1860, three 3 r ears after the publication of the Provisional Lit- 
urgy, the Committee made their final report and were discharg- 
ed. The new work was in circulation, accessible to all alike, and the 
Synod submitted it to the Classes for their examination, approval 
or disapproval. — At the Synod of Easton in the following } T ear, the 
Classes reported favorably in regard to its merits, its general plan 
and reigning spirit, most of them making various suggestions ac- 
cording to which it might be improved, and some of them calling 
for its revision. Thereupon it was placed in the hands of the 
original Committee for its final revision, and the principles which 
were to guide them in their work distinctly stated. Thej T were in- 
structed to consider the suggestions of the Classes as given in the 
minutes of their late meetings, "as far as the general unity of the 
work would allow, and in a way that shall not be inconsistent either 
with established liturgical principles and usages, or with the devo- 
tional and doctrinal genius of the German Reformed Church." 

It was the wish of the Synod that the Committee should com- 
plete the revised edition of the Liturgy, and present it at its next 
annual meeting, if possible, with the view of bringing this devo- 
tional work to the consummation desired by the Church during the 
Tercentenary Commemoration of the Heidelberg Catechism, to be 
observed by the Church as a whole during the year 1863. 

The Provisional Liturg}^ already published had been unanimously 
adopted by the Committee, but when the question of revision was 
brought before it, there was a diversity of opinion, and unexpected 
difficulties sprang up in regard to the precise nature of the revision 
that was required. It was, therefore, thought best by the Com- 
mittee not to take any further steps in the matter, until the mind 
of the Church could be more definitely ascertained. They there- 
fore submitted to the Sjmocl of Chambers burg, in 1862, a lengthy 
report, published in pamphlet form, prepared by Dr. Nevin, discus- 
sing the general principles of liturgical worship, pointing out the 
difference between what was termed an Altar and Pulpit Liturgy, 
and presenting the case ver}^ candidly, in a fair and honorable man- 
ner, in order that the Synod might act intelligently in the premises. 
The report of a small minorit}^ was read, proposing to adopt the 
Provisional Liturgy, alread}^ published, with a number of changes, 

(494) 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 495 

omissions and so on, which were specifically pointed out. This led 
to a very animated discussion, which continued for several days, 
at the end of which the Synod voted down the proposition to 
amend or expurgate the Provisional Liturgy; and deeming it ad- 
visable to give the Church still further time for reflection, decided 
by a large majority, that the optional use of the Liturgy should be 
continued for ten years from the time of its publication, and that 
the whole question of its revision should be postponed for the 
present. 

Thus far the preparation of a new Liturgy was in the hands of 
the Eastern Synod of the Church and was intended more partic- 
ularly to meet its wants. The Western or Ohio Synod in 1852 had 
appointed a Committee to co-operate with the Eastern Committee 
in the preparation of a suitable Liturgy for the use of the entire 
Reformed Church; and at Neriah, Michigan, in 1853, it approved 
of the " Plan and Principles " for the new Liturgy, proposed b}^ Dr. 
Schaff at the Synod of Baltimore in 1852. In 1854, however, at 
its meeting at Greensburg, Pa., it dissolved its Committee, and de- 
cided that the Church, as a whole, did not then seem to be prepared 
to go forward cordially with this important work. Thus the move- 
ment came to be confined, principally, to the Church in the East. 
But in the meantime a change in the constitution of the Church 
was effected by uniting the different particular S} T nods in one Gen- 
eral Synod, and through it the Church, as a whole, was brought to 
confront the Liturgical Question. Had it been left in the hands of 
those who were its originators, it would have been solved with 
much less difficulty ; but Providence ordered otherwise, and, in the 
end, it was better that the whole Church itself should unite in set- 
tling peacefully the controversy brought upon it. — At the first meet- 
ing of the General Synod at Pittsburgh in 1863, a recommendation 
was sent down to the Eastern Synod to go forward with the work 
of revising the Liturgy, according to its own judgment, so as to have 
the work completed by the next meeting of the General Synod in 
1866. According^, at the Synod of Lancaster in 1864, the subject 
of the Liturgy was once more brought before it for consideration. 
It complied with the wish of the higher body, and reappointed the 
old Committee to revise their work, and to report the result of 
their labors to the Synod before the next meeting of the General 
Synod, so that it might be revised and approved before it was sub- 
mitted to that body, according to its request. 

Under such encouragement, acting as a stimulus or spur, the Com- 
mittee went to work again in good earnest, held many meetings, re- 



496 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ceiving or rejecting their own contributions to the work, using the 
freest and sharpest criticism, and had it finished and published by 
the time the Synod met at York, in October, 1866. The word 
"Liturgy" had come to be offensive to mairv persons, and the new 
book was simple called An Order of Worship for the Beformed 
Church. Its superior merits justified the expectations of its 
friends. It was a vast improvement in all respects on its predeces- 
sor. The defects of the latter had been pointed out, and had come 
to be felt by the Committee men themselves, no doubt, more than 
by any one else. They were, therefore, the best qualified to make 
all the needed improvement on their previous work. It was a gem 
in liturgical literature, a near approach, to say the least, to a work 
of art, no matter what might be its future destiny. A cop} T of the 
Order of Worship was presented to the Sj'nocl for examination, 
whereupon it was referred to a committee for a careful examination. 
After giving a brief histoiy of the liturgical movement from its in- 
cipiency, such as we are here repeating, the report thus concludes : 

"The instructions given to the Committee from time to time, 
after much diligent labor continued for the last two } T ears, embrac- 
ing foiiy-five sessions in all, have been carried out, and as a result 
we now have before us the Revised Liturg} T , printed and prepared 
for the examination of Sj^nod. The work bears on its face the in- 
dications of unwearied patience and perseverance, of self-denying 
toil, of an elevated and devotional taste, of much study and reflec- 
tion, and an undeniable purpose to serve the Church and the cause 
of Christ. It is questionable whether more labor and earnestness 
of purpose have ever been bestowed on an} T similar work, in Europe 
or in this country. 

"From the history of the progress and consummation of the 
work before us, as it has just been given, the Committee are of the 
opinion, that the Liturg3 T , which is now presented to the Church, 
is fully as much the work of the Synod as of the Committee. It 
must be conceded, we think, that the Committee have acted with 
prudence, and respect for the instructions of the S} T nod at each 
step they have undertaken in the prosecution of their labors, and 
that all along the\ T have been prompted and urged forward in their 
work by the special action of the Synod. The Liturg} T is, there- 
fore, the legitimate offspring of the S} T nod. Whether it will ever 
come into general use in our congregations or not, it is evident that 
for all time to come, it will be a monument both to the learning, 
ability, piety, and devotion of its authors and to the liturgical idea, 
which they have so well comprehended. 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 497 

"The revised edition just published, and now reported to the 
Synod, comes recommended to us as an improvement on its prede- 
cessor. It might be presumed, if we may judge from the amount 
of labor bestowed on the revision, and the experience which the 
Committee were enabled to bring to their task, that this should be 
the case. Various changes have been made in it, so as to make it 
more suitable for use in divine worship, while the spirit, aim, and 
general character of the Provisional Liturgy, have been retained." 

The report then concluded with several resolutions, recommend- 
ing that the thanks of the Synod be rendered to the great Head of 
the Church that this work, so far as the Synod was concerned, was 
brought to a termination; that its thanks be tendered to the Com- 
mittee for the zeal, ability and unrequited toil, which they had dis- 
played in the prosecution of the work, from the beginning to the 
end ; that the Revised Liturgy be referred to the General Synod 
for action; and that its optional use be allowed within the limits 
of the Synod, until the whole question should be finally settled by 
the various Classes and the General Synod, according to the Con- 
stitution of the Church. The report elicited considerable discus- 
sion, and aroused a deep interest in the community. Here, at this 
Synod, the war against the Order of Worship and its tendencies, 
extending over a number of years, was initiated, which on the whole 
probably did it more good than harm. Being the only one of ten 
opposed to the form of the revision, Dr. Bomberger had withdrawn 
from the Committee, and from that time onward he fought the Or- 
der of Worship with such weapons as he deemed most effective. 
His speech at this Synod was answered by Dr. Harbaugh in his own 
peculiar style, to the satisfaction of all liturgical men. Dr. Nevin 
and other members present did not deem it necessary to make any 
extended remarks or arguments, as the matter seemed to be in safe 
hands. The Synod adopted the report b} r an overwhelming majority. 
— Much interest was now concentrated in the approaching meeting 
of the General Synod which was to convene at Dayton, Ohio, dur- 
ing the latter part of the following month of November. 

After the Ohio Synod at Greensburg, in 1854, had decided that 
the Church was not prepared to go forward in the formation of a 
new liturgy, a liturgical feeling began to spring up among some of 
its ministers, which could not be suppressed by any feeling of in- 
difference or doubt which may have previously prevailed. In 1863, 
in answer to its request, the General Synod at Pittsburgh granted 
it permission to go on and prepare for itself a new Liturgy, such 
as, in its view, might suit the wants of the Church, recommend- 



498 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ing, as already said, that the Eastern Synod should do the same 
thing in the revision of its Provisional Liturg3 r . It was expected 
that the former would have had its work ready for examination by 
the time the general body was to meet at Da}^ton. Its Committee, 
however, probably found it a more difficult undertaking than they 
had imagined, and at the specified time the} 7 were simply able to 
report progress. But they had developed, to some extent, their 
ideas of a liturgjr, far enough to make it manifest that it differed 
materially from that underlying the Order of Worship, and it, there- 
fore, soon became evident that there was to be a clash of ideas at 
the Dayton meeting, and preparations on a large scale were made for 
the coming event. It came, moreover, to be generally understood 
that it was not simply two liturgies or pra\ r er-books that were to 
be brought into mortal combat, but two tendencies involving many 
questions in theology or conceptions of doctrines, that were to be 
discussed, if not finally settled. Ideas, in fact, probably had as 
much to do in this controversy as the mere matter of forms, new 
or old. 

Under this view of the case there was no small amount of prepara- 
tion for the coming conflict in the highest judicatory of the Church. 
We here describe briefly the prelude, making use of Dr. Nevin's 
own language in his "Vindication of the Revised Liturgy, His- 
torical and Theological," published in 1867. 

" The opposition," he said, "had been at work for some time, and 
it was now prepared to go to work and accomplish the destruction 
of the .young child's life, as if it could be satisfied with nothing less. 
Although it had been declared all along that it was such an order 
of worship as the people did not want, and never could be brought 
to receive with any kind of favor, yet when it barety asked permis- 
sion to live, and nothing more, it became evident that even such a 
boon would be regarded as unsafe. Who could tell what power 
might be slumbering in that gentle, peaceful form? And so the 
fiat went forth not altogether openly, but, as it were, in secret: 
'Let the Liturg}- die, before it is well-born; let it pass away as an 
untimely birth, and become thus as though it had never been.' 
Efforts were made in the East to persuade the Church in the West 
that all things were going wrong in the Eastern Synod, both theo- 
logically and ecclesiastically ; and that the salvation of the German 
Reformed church in this countiy now depended on the rising star 
of empire in the Synod of Ohio and the Adjacent States. Those 
who had been worsted over and over again in their anti-liturgical 
conflicts in the East, claimed to be the reigning power among the 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 499 

people, and it, therefore, afforded them great satisfaction now to 
think of joining hands with the Ultramontanese brethren at Da}^- 
ton, in a swelling wave, once and forever to roll off from the Re- 
formed Church the reproach now resting upon it from the liturgical 
movement. In these circumstances Dr. Bomberger and his friends 
acted vigorously and adroitly, if not wisely, and they spared no 
pains to win the game. His tract on the ' Ritualistic Movement ' 
was got up with great speed after the Synod of York, and circulated 
far and wide before the great assembly met at Dayton. The west- 
ern paper — the Missionary — set itself to work to sounding contin- 
uous alarms on the same theme. Dark, ominous, bad-sounding 
words, were made to fall on all sides upon the ears of the people. 
Appeals were addressed to their prejudices and fears rather than 
to their reason and common sense. All was done here, as at York 
in 1845, to influence the jury before it heard the evidence, so that 
the Order of Worship might be prejudged and condemned, before 
it was seen or read. 

"We all felt this, when we got to Dayton. There was an element 
at work around us, that boded no good, but harm only to the New 
Liturgy or Order. The opposition to it was strong ; and it was 
called to give account of itself at what was, in one sense at least, 
a foreign bar. The Western delegation was full : the delegation 
from the East, especially in the case of the Elders, was only par- 
tially present. It was painfully evident, moreover, that the West- 
ern delegation itself had no power, as matters stood in the West, 
to be entirely independent and free. Men could not vote in all 
cases as they might wish ; but had to do it, in some cases at least, 
as they must." — The liturgical plant, that had commenced to bud 
at Neriah, Michigan, in 1853, had been suppressed, and another had 
sprung up and taken its place. The Synod of Ohio was no longer 
under the conservative influence of the men of 1853. 

In the regular order of business the Liturgical Question came 
up for consideration, whereupon it was referred to a committee of 
nine, fairly representing the different parts of the Church in their 
numerical strength. There was, as might be expected, a majority 
and a minority report. The former was brief, and simply recom- 
mended that the Western Synod, in conformity with its own wish, 
be authorized to continue its labors in preparing its own Liturgy ; 
that the Revised Liturgy should be allowed to be used as a proper 
order of worship in the congregations and families of the Reformed 
Church; and that it should be understood that this action was not 
designed to interfere in any way with the freedom of ministers or 



500 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

congregations who might not be prepared to use the Liturgy in 
whole or in part. — This report was based on the fact that the 
Western Synod had not yet finished its liturgical work, which, in 
the nature of the case, precluded the possibility of referring the 
subject to the Classes at the time; and it was moreover deemed 
desirable that the liturgical movement in the Reformed Church 
should be left to work out its legitimate results in a free and un- 
trammeled way. 

The minority report, on the other hand, was much more lengthy 
and suggestive. It stated the various objections to the Order of 
Worship in detail, which, as they had been advanced repeatedly 
in other places, and were brought to the S}mod on something like 
a special train by an avant-courier, in the tract on the " Ritualistic 
Movement," it will be proper here once for all to give them a place, 
— not omitting italics, without note or comment — and only slightly 
abbreviated. The report affirms that the Revised Liturgy amount- 
ed, in fact, to a fundamental revolution in the order of worship in 
the Reformed Church during the whole period of its existence in 
America : 

That it is not in accordance with the original character and ge- 
nius of the Reformed Church, according to the' Palatinate and 
other Reformed Liturgies of the sixteenth century ; 

That it is not in accord with the historical tradition of the Re- 
formed Church; 

That it is not in accordance with the present circumstances and 
needs of the Reformed Church; 

That there is little prospect of its successful introduction into 
most of the churches, and that the persistent attempt to introduce 
it will only issue in failure in the end ; 

That it will be the cause of loss, strife, division and schism in 
our congregations; 

That its tendenc}^ will be gradually to merge a large portion of 
the Church in another denomination ; 

That it will tend to unsettle the foundations of the Church in re- 
gard to church government ; 

That it will tend to unsettle our beloved Zion in respect to its 
established doctrines ; 

That it is believed that it contains doctrines, which are decidedly 
not in accordance with the doctrines of our Confession of Faith, 
the Heidelberg Catechism; 

That it will ultimately, if not at once, infringe upon the Christian 
libeily of ministers and people; 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 501 

That it will separate us more and more from sister denomina- 
tions, most closely allied to ns, with whom we yearn for a closer 
union ; 

That it does not pay clue respect to the German Reformed Church 
of the past, the ''mother of us all;" 

That the system of worship it seeks to introduce, however beau- 
tiful in itself, and well adapted, in some cases, to intelligent and 
educated congregations, is wholly unsuited to the great body of 
plain people; 

And finally, that it's influence upon ministers and people, on mis- 
sions, on the increase of ministers, on church extension, on charity 
among ourselves, and the work of grace in the hearts of our people, 
will be of doubtful benefit. 

After these accusations had been made — specifications duly filed 
— this minority report offered several resolutions : one to the effect 
that for reasons stated the Synod could not give the Order of Wor- 
ship its approval ; the other was that it, with the Western Liturgy, 
should be placed in the hands of a Committee as material for the 
construction of a new Liturgy that should be in harmony with the 
doctrinal and devotional principles of the Reformed Church, and 
that its general basis should be — most probably the general basis 
of the Western Liturgy, — so far as it had then arisen out of chaos. 

This report being offered as a substitute for the report of the 
majorit} r , the great debate, attracting vast crowds of people, be- 
gan on Tuesday afternoon and continued until Thursday, ending at 
five o'clock p. m. In the evening, after half an hour spent in 
devotional services, consisting of singing and prayer, the Synod 
proceeded to vote Irv yeas and nays. The so-called amendment 
was lost and the report of the majority was carried by a majority 
of seve?i votes. All the ministers from the Eastern Synod voted 
with the majority except five or six, and the same was true of 
the Elders. The Western delegates, with few or no exceptions, 
voted in the negative. Had the delegates, Ministers and Elders 
from sleepy Pennsylvania been as wide awake as their brethren in 
the West, they would have carried the day by a much larger ma- 
jority. 

The discussion took a wide range, covering all the points in- 
cluded in the bill of impeachment of the Order of Worship, and 
more too, including earnest disquisitions on man}^ vital points in 
theology ; was listened to with profound attention by the Synod 
and crowds of outsiders ; and to intelligent listeners, who could 
make allowance for the Babies Theologica ,which too often rages on 



502 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

such occasions, it must have been instructive and edifjing in the 
highest degree. In the circumstances of the case, Dr. Nevin be- 
came the central figure, as his fame had preceded him. His form 
was still as erect as when he stood up before a similar audience 
twentj-one } T ears before, at York, Pa., his voice just as firm, his 
intellect, if anything, more vigorous, but his head was now covered 
with the winter of years, a venerable sage, whose presence in any 
assemblage, even the highest, would have arrested immediate atten- 
tion. Those who differed from him in his churchly tendencies, and 
looked upon them with more or less suspicion, especially foreign 
born Germans, paid him involuntary reverence and respect. His 
argument, liturgical, historical, and theological, mostly defensive, 
occup3 T ing two sessions of the Synod, forenoon and afternoon, was 
exhaustive, covered the ground of a theological treatise, and was 
stimulating as well as suggestive to all who listened to it. A west- 
ern member occasionally interrupted him by asking him annoying 
questions, and was answered so appropriately, that a distinguished 
military officer present, General McCook, whispered to a friend 
at his side, that u he had better retreat and get into his bomb- 
proof." He, and others like him, somewhat captious, did thus re- 
treat, as the thunder of theological artillery exploded over their 
heads. 

The result of the long discussion at Dayton was highly satisfac- 
tory to Dr. Nevin, for which he thanked God and took courage. 
Most probablj 7 it was now for the first time that he began to see 
that his own labor, with that of his colleagues on the Committe?, 
was destined to bear positive fruit. It will be remembered that in 
1850, he did not consider it expedient to go forward and make an 
attempt to prepare a new liturgy, and recommended a translation of 
the old Liturgy of the Palatinate for the use of the churches. At 
the Synod of Lancaster in 1851, he says in his Vindication, "the 
Committee had come to despair very much of their being able to 
produce any liturgy, that would prove generally and permanently 
satisfactory to the Church. This was especially my own feeling. 
I had not led the wajr at all in the movement; my heart was not in 
it with any special zeal; I was concerned with it only in obedience 
to the appointment of Synod ; other interests appeared to me at 
the time to be of more serious account; and I had no faith in our 
being able to bring the work to any ultimate success. In these cir- 
cumstances, I was not willing to stand charged with the responsi- 
bility of continuing Chairman of the Committee; and accordingly I 
asked the Synod to relieve me from this position on the Committee, 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 503 

with the understanding that I would be willing to act with it still 
in a subordinate character. The request was granted, and Dr. 
Schaff was made Chairman in my place. 

"Dr. Schaff went to work in earnest, and set the rest of us to 
work also, in preparing new forms. He had faith in the move- 
ment, but as for myself, I confess I had almost none. Still I tried 
to do my share of service, and spent hours in what was found to 
be generally a tedious and irksome task. The work necessarily 
involved liturgical studies ; and these brought with them a growing 
liturgical culture, which required an enlargement of the range 
within which it was proposed, originally, to confine the course of 
the movement. 

"Three years now passed, the Committee working, but not with 
any comfortable feeling of success. There was an accumulation of 
material which brought no light or order in the work of construc- 
tion. Much that was done was afterwards felt to be unsatisfactory. 
One great difficulty was, that the work seemed continually to un- 
settle and destroy itself. What was done would not stay done, 
but all had to be done over again. The hard road of the Commit- 
tee led them through a wreck of matter and a crush of forms, until 
their wonder was that they had left the green pastures of ignorance 
and the quiet waters of tradition, when they had first been put to 
the working out of their task." 

In 1857, after the Provisional Liturgy was published, Dr. Nevin 
experienced a feeling of relief, but he was not much hopeful as to 
the success of the work. "I had no expectation myself," he says, 
"that the work would be generally adopted. It was not fitted for 
easy and smooth practice; it seemed to be too great a change for 
our churches; and the very fact of its being an experiment, stood in 
the way of any general serious effort to bring it into use. Still I 
did feel that the labors of the Committee had not been thrown away. 
The work had its literary value. It might do good service educa- 
tionally. It was a relief, at all events, to feel that with it we had 
reached a decent end for our long, weary pilgrimage in search of a 
Liturgy ; for there was no reason to think we could now reach our 
object in any other way. The Church might not be prepared at all 
for this new order of worship; but it was just as clear, that she 
could not now be satisfied with any such book of forms as was 
thought of in the beginning. We were beyond that. We had got 
into the wilderness together; and the best thing we could do, as it 
seemed, was to make up our minds now to stay there for forty 
years at least, leaving it for the next generation to get up their 



504 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

own Liturgy, should they think proper, in a way to please them- 
selves. That was about the feeling in which I had come to settle 
comfortably in regard to the whole matter; and it gave me uny- 
thing but pleasure to be rudely jostled out of it, a few years later, 
hy the cry that was made for a Revision." 

The Liturgy of 1857 met with an extensive circulation, and, 
with the exception of the forms for the Lord's Supper, and the 
Lord's Day, was in general use among the ministers in the East. 
At the same time, moreover, "it was wonderful to see," as Dr. 
Nevin says, "how it worked as a silent influence among us, in favor 
of sound ideas on the subject of Christian worship. It wrought a 
change, far and wide, in the spirit and form of the sanctuaiy ser- 
vices. It served to deepen among us the power of the liturgical 
movement, which had given it birth. It became more and more 
apparent that this movement could not be turned back ; could not 
be arrested, and made to stand still. Its onl\ T redemption and de- 
liverance lay in going forward." 

And yet when the S} r nod of Easton in 1861 placed the Liturgy 
in the hands of the original committee for revision, he preferred to 
remain in the "wilderness," and let the "next generation " come 
and enter the promised land. " Man}' will remember," he saj^s, 
"how earnestly I tried, at this time, to have my own name, at least, 
dropped from this new commission. I told the Sjmocl that I had 
no faith in the undertaking; that I did not think the Church was 
prepared to receive the Liturgy in any form we could give it; that 
I knew the proposed work would involve more than the slight 
changes some talked of; that I was sure the Committee would not 
be able to get forward now with full agreement; that there was no 
reason then to expect that the Church generally would be satisfied 
with what was done; that in these circumstances the service ap- 
peared to me a thankless waste of labor and time ; that I had no 
heart for it, and could take no part in it with any animation or zeal ; 
and that my want of spirit in this way would make me a dead 
weight only on the cause I was expected to serve. All this I urged ; 
and fairly begged, over and over again, to be excused from the ap- 
pointment. But the Synod would not hearken to my pra3 T er. The 
old Committee must serve, and I must serve with it." — Of course this 
was earnest and sincere language; and it effectually precludes the 
idea, advanced in certain quarters, that Dr. Xevin, during either this 
period or subsequent^, was acting a part in trying to foist a liturg}- 
on the Church which it did not want. Here as elsewhere through- 
out his life, he was honest, truthful and straightforward. It was 



Chap. XXXX] the revised liturgy 505 

indeed characteristic of him generally not to engage in any serious 
work for the Church except as he came in some sense to be pressed 
into it. Then he felt assured that he was guided and directed by 
the hand of Providence. He was slow to propose measures, or to 
appear as an ostensible leader, but when once impressed, as it were, 
into a service by the prayers of those whose judgment he felt bound 
to respect, he was sure to become the actual leader and to perform 
the hardest part of the work. 

Disposed as he was at times from his natural constitution to look 
unduly at the dark side of things, the action of the Church at Day- 
ton, in 1866, revived his courage, his faith and hope, and for the 
first time he began to see in the liturgical movement some raj^s of 
daylight — some prospect that the protracted labors of the Litur- 
gical Committee were not destined to be in vain in the Lord. At 
an age when our military officers are regarded in this country as 
having already passed beyond their period of active service, he was 
now simply at the meridian of his intellectual strength and seemed 
to give indication of rejuvenescence. 

"In the circumstances," we quote again from his Vindication, 
" which have been described, it was a great victory that was wrought 
in favor of this cause at Dayton; far beyond all that it might ap- 
pear to be to superficial observation. The vote in its favor meant a 
great deal more than the difference simply of the yeas and nays re- 
corded in it ; and the enemies of the Liturgy knew the same thing. 
The true significance of the vote lies in the fact, that it was a strug- 
gle of the East to save its own cause here, against an organized op- 
position which sought, by help of the West, to destroy it — a struggle, 
at the same time, which had to be maintained on Western ground. 
In this character, the stand made in favor of the Liturgy was 
powerfully felt in the West itself. There was a moral superiority 
gained by the argument in its behalf, which told upon the General. 
Synod and upon the outside community with far wider and deeper 
effect than any counting of votes, which has been working for good 
ever since, and which will continue to work for good still, through 
a long time to come. But more than all this, was the way the con- 
flict served to bring out the thought and feeling of the Eastern 
Synod in regard to the great interest which was here at stake, and 
to show clearly where it stood, and intended to stand, on the issue 
which had been raised concerning it. — It was properly an Eastern » 
question that was to be decided. The Liturgy belonged properly 
to the Eastern Synod; was the child of the Eastern Synod; had' 
its home in the Eastern Synod ; and by the judgment of the East- 
32 



506 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ern Synod it was destined finally to stand or fall. In this view, as 
all may easily see, the vote was an overwhelming decision in its 
favor. — Our Eastern Eldership, after all the attempts which had 
been made to alarm their fears, and set them in array against their 
ministers, went almost in a body in favor of the Liturgy. Shall 
we hear anything more of a want of S3 T mpatlry and good under- 
standing between the S3 r nod and its Committee on this subject? 

"What has just been said does not mean, of course, that the 
Revised Liturgy has been endorsed and ratified, in form, b}^ what 
was done at Dayton. The vote there, we all know, was not in- 
tended to do anj^thing of that sort. The time for anything of the 
kind had not come. The vote simpty meant that the Liturgy 
should have fair play ; that as a work of art, it should not be sub- 
jected to the vandalism of being made so much raw material merely 
for the manufacture of another — not of art ; and that after having 
been brought, through long years of learned and laborious prepa- 
ration, under the eye and ordering hand of the Sjmod, to the per- 
fect working form it had now reached, it should not be kicked to 
the one side by such as knew nothing about it ; but should have, at 
least, an opportunity of coming before the people, to be tried by 
them on its own merits. This was what the action at Dayton 
meant ; nothing more. But this, in the circumstances, was much. 
.Nobly has it served to redeem the honor of the Eastern Synod, 
and to vindicate the good name of its grossly slandered Liturgical 
Committee. 

" So much for the historical defence of the Liturgy. How far 
the work itself, in the form in which it is now before the public, 
majrprove satisfactory to the Church, remains yet to be seen. The 
•Committee, with its friends generally, are quite willing to leave the 
settlement of that question where it properly belongs, with the 
people. Our appointed service is done ; done faithfully, and to the 
•best of our ability. We have got out, at last, what we believe to 
be a good Liturgy, in good working order ; and room is now made 
for its being put to practical experiment among our Churches. If 
-they find it to be what they want, and are willing to make use of 
it, either in whole or in part, it will be well. If they find it other- 
•wise, and do not choose to adopt it, that will be all well too ; no- 
body will have any reason to complain ; the thing will have taken 
its right course, and come to its conclusion in a fair and right way. 
That is all that is wanted or wished. — If it cannot bear to have its 
merits fairly and honestly investigated in this way, it ought not to 
-expect favor. It courts enlightened criticism." — The moral victory 



Chap. XXXX] an era of controversy 50T 

at Dayton was an important one, but like that at Antietam or Get- 
tysburg it did not end the liturgical war, which must continue for 
some 3 7 ears more until the real strength of the liturgical sentiment 
could be brought out and tested on one more field of battle. 

The Elders who supported the Liturgy, believing that the tract 
entitled " A History and Criticism of the Ritualistic Movement in 
the Reformed Church" was "one-sided and unfair, and calculated 
to do harm in the Church," unanimously united in a request that 
Dr. Nevin should furnish a history of the preparation and a critical 
review of the merits of the Revised Liturgy for publication. He 
complied with this request, and not long afterwards his " Vindica- 
tion of the Revised Liturgy, — Historical and Theological" Pp. 93, 
made its appearance. The historical portion defended the moral 
integrity of the Committee against the charge that they had diso- 
beyed the instructions of Synod in the preparation of the Liturgy ; 
that by persevering efforts they had sought to work out a liturgy 
of their own rather than such a one as the Synod called for ; and 
that by delays, from time to time, by management or their own 
manipulations, they had sought to secure its ultimate adoption. 
These charges were answered in the Yindication by the facts, already 
mentioned in these pages, in a racy style, glittering at times with a 
mixture of pleasantry and withering sarcasm, to which no one on 
the other side of the house could consistently make any objections. 

The second part of the tract, occupied with something more sub- 
stantial, was a vindication of the Christological, — Christo-centric 
— and churchly views which underlay the structure of the Liturgy, 
including a reply to the objections made against its doctrine of Or- 
dination, Confession and Absolution, Baptism, the Lord's Supper* 
and correlated points. The theology here developed over against 
what was designated an " Anti-Liturgical Theology " is substantially 
the same that has been set forth in other parts of this volume, and 
needs no repetition in this place. 

The Vindication was published in the early part of the year 186*7, 
and close on its heels, before the end of the Spring, appeared a " Re- 
ply," in a tract of 156 pages with the title, "Reformed, not Ritual- 
istic," published at the request of two more elders than the num- 
ber that called forth the "Yindication." It covered pretty much 
the same ground as the previous tract on the same subject, which 
some thought was a bomb-shell thrown into the S}mod of Dayton ; 
and the frequent occurrence of harsh words and phrases directed 
against the author of the "Yindication," showed that the character 
of this second attack on the Liturg}^ and its authors was in the main 



508 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

the same as the first. — It may be proper to add that Dr. Nevin did 
not think it necessaiy to reply to this second thrust at the Liturgy 
in another vindication, as it was thought that he had alreadj- an- 
swered it sufficiently before its appearance. — For the next three 
years the liturgical conflict continued more or less in public or pri- 
vate, of which we can here give no particular account. It served to 
show, at least, the earnestness of the churchly, liturgical movement. 

In the year 1869 the General Sjruod met in Philadelphia, and as 
it had been generally understood that the liturgical question was 
to come up once more for consideration or settlement, the meeting 
was unusually well attended. This time the Eastern Elders were all 
in their places, and those from the West out to Iowa did not lag 
much behind them. 

The Western Liturgy had been published and a copy of it was 
presented to the SjTiod for examination. The committee, to whom 
this new work and other matters pertaining to the general subject 
were referred, reported through its chairman, Dr. Thomas G. 
Appel, that the two S i ynocls of the West, English and German, be 
allowed to use their " Liturg}* or Order of Worship," just published, 
according to their request, in the same wa} T as the Synod in the 
East had been accorded this privilege at Dayton in 1866; that 
nothing could be gained by sending any Liturgy down to the 
Classes for confirmation or rejection in existing circumstances, as 
the Church was not prepared to unite on one or the other at the 
time ; that the only possible course to be pursued was to allow, with- 
in certain limits, the question to work out its own results freely, 
and to put no trammels upon the matter in any way; and that it be 
commended to all the lower Church Courts; and especially to all 
the churches, the necessity and importance of moderation, prudence 
and charity, in reference to the differences that existed on the sub- 
ject of liturgical worship, in order that all might in the end be 
brought to unity and peace. A substitute for this report was 
thereupon immediately proposed, recommending that the two Lit- 
urgies be submitted to the several Classes for approval or disap- 
proval; that, in the meantime, the optional use of both be allowed 
in divine worship; and that neither should be employed in the 
churches without the formal consent of the consistoiy and the con- 
gregation. 

The discussion then commenced and continued during three ses- 
sions. The audiences were large, intelligent and discriminating. 
The number of advisory members present from all parts of the 
Church in the East and the far West was nearly as large as that of 



Chap. XXXX] an era of controversy 509 

the regular delegates. Besides, -many clergymen and laymen of dif- 
ferent denominations were present as interested spectators. The 
subject was somewhat new to most outsiders, but the liturgical feel- 
ing had begun to awake in man}^ minds in different directions, and 
all seemed anxious to hear what could be said on the subject. The 
substitute, although plausible at first view, had in it an inherent 
weakness, which soon became manifest. Had it prevailed, neither 
of the two Liturgies would have received the vote of two-thirds of 
the Classes, — thirty-two in all — which were necessary according to 
the Constitution of the Church for the adoption of a liturgy. The 
result would have been " confusion worse confounded," and both 
Liturgies, the fruit of much labor and toil, would have been dis- 
graced. Some probably would have been quite well satisfied with 
such a denouement, or cutting of the G-ordian knot; this certainly 
would have been true of a reverend delegate, innocent of much 
historical development, who, in the midst of a warm discussion at 
a previous Sjmod, once got up and in a sort of panic or fright was 
led to cry out: "Mr. President, can't we stop the Liturgy?" 

But there were sober-minded, reflecting men in the Philadelphia 
Synod who would not suffer the Church to reduce itself to an ab- 
surdity. Dr. Nevin, at the close of a comparatively short speech, 
said that the substitute reminded him of the proposition of King 
Solomon, to thrust the sword through the living as well as the dead 
child. The proposal here might suit those who took no interest in 
any liturgy, or thought their own liturgy was a dead child, but 
must be rejected with horror b} r all those who believed that their 
liturgical child was a living one. The remark produced some mer- 
riment at first, but a ver}^ deep and profound sensation throughout 
the house in a moment afterward. — The substitute was defeated and 
the original report adopted by more than a two-thirds majority — 
117 yeas to 52 nays and 9 non-liquets, a considerable number of 
the western members voting with their eastern brethren. The 
forces of the opposition were shattered, and the last great moral 
battle was won. It resembled in some respects those waged 
around Appomattox Court-house, which had been fought a few 
years before. It ought to have been followed by a voluntary cessa- 
tion of hostilities on fair and honorable terms, and an agreement to 
live together in peace and unity, but the time for that had not yet 
arrived. 

The subject of the Liturgy, therefore, continued to be discussed 
in the papers of the Church from both stand-points, and at times 
by no means in a broad Christian spirit. The Reformed Monthly, 



510 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

the organ of the opposition, based on the minorit}' report at Da} T ton, 
and abounding, to say the least, with numerous non-sequiturs, paid 
its monthly visits to its patrons without adding much to their edifi- 
cation. In the year 1874, Dr. Schneck, borrowing largely from the 
Monthly just mentioned, with its errors of statement, published 
his "Mercersburg Theology, inconsistent with Protestant and Re- 
formed Doctrine," which, without any intention on his part, by 
its title, struck at Dr. Schaff's theology no less than Dr. Nevin's. 
In a large degree it fell still-born from the press, and Dr. Nevin 
did not think it necessary to notice it or other literature of the same 
kind. He was, however, considerably interested in a Convention 
held at M3^erstown, in Lebanon count}', Pa,, in 186T, mainly for 
the purpose of arresting the liturgical movement — of course with 
all that it involved. It was an appeal to the people, and there was 
no telling what it might come to. The meeting was largely attended 
by members of the churches whose ministers belonged to the anti- 
liturgical wing. It was pervaded with a considerable degree of 
enthusiasm, and the conclusion was to send up to the Synod a bill 
of complaints and to ask for redress. The Synod, however, did 
not regard the appeal as in ecclesiastical order, and told the breth- 
ren who attended the mass meeting, that thereafter the}' should 
bring up their complaints through the regular judicatories of the 
Church, which were the constituted channels for such purposes. 
Dr. Nevin, who was present at the Synod, advocated this as the 
proper course to be pursued, and the popular uprising against the 
Liturgy did not end in an y serious harm, as he apprehended it 
might. 

In the Committee appointed by the Synod to send forth a Pas- 
toral Letter to the churches warning them against holding such 
popular meetings, he helped to intone its language so as to reflect 
upon the Myerstown Convention more sternly, perhaps, than was 
really necessary. It was composed of earnest and sincere men, who 
came together, as they believed, to save the Church from the long 
array of imaginary mischiefs that were sure to grow out of the 
Order of Worship according to the minority report at Dayton. 
As the evils were not likely to be realized, the Myerstown Conven- 
tion was a harmless affair, " signifying nothing," and it was scarcely 
necessary for the Synod to make so much account of it. 

The war continued for several years on a small scale, each side 
apparently watching the other so that neither might get the advan- 
tage, not even in any skirmish or foray into the territory of the 
other. The conflicts had been attended with many direful results, 



Chap. XXXX] the return of peace 511 

as was often alleged, but for the most part the} 7 were supplemented 
by such as were positively useful. Classes, especially in the West, 
were divided and increased, so as to strengthen the representation 
at the General Synod for special emergencies; but that new depar- 
ture helped to wake up the overgrown Classes in Pennsylvania to 
do the same thing ; two of which were nearly or quite as strong in 
membership as the two western Synods combined. The vexed ques- 
tion of the Liturgy ever and anon popped up in consistories, classes 
or synods, and stirred up a breeze which did no great harm to 
sluggish Teutonic blood. Sometimes a congregation was split 
asunder by the undue zeal of the liturgicals or the anti-liturgicals, 
and the result was the formation of a new congregation, which in 
the end was a positive gain; because, if the swarm had not been 
disturbed, the bees would have remained in the old hive, and been 
too sluggish to swarm of their own accord. In more than one in- 
stance, polemics instead of the Gospel of the day was preached from 
the. sacred desk, which was an unmitigated evil — 

When pulpit drum ecclesiastic 

Was beat with a fist instead of a stick. 

But admitting the evils of the long campaign, the Church advanced 
in its inner life and its practical activitj^. Those who wished to 
pray by the book in the East were numerically the stronger, ruled 
in the Classes and the Synod, and accordingly felt their response 
bility. They reorganized the missionary work of the Church, 
awakened new interest in practical church activity, and helped to 
give the anti-liturgicals something else to think about in the place 
of what had come to occupy an undue amount of their attention. 
On the whole the controversy did a vast amount of good to the 
Church in breaking up its spiritual slumbers and in bringing it to 
its proper self-consciousness, self-respect, and the conviction that 
it had a specific work of its own to perform with other branches of 
the Church of Christ in this country. Here the treasure committed 
to earthen vessels appeared only the more resplendent, because they 
seemed to be so earthy and fragile. 

But Churches get tired of controversies — especially after they 
have run their course — and Christians engaged in them for a while 
long for peace and an era of good will. A reaction gradually set 
in soon after the great meeting in Philadelphia, and from that time 
onward the period of reconstruction may be said to have com- 
menced, which only waited for an opportunity to manifest its 
strength. There were many indications of a deep undercurrent of 
feeling in favor of the restoration of peaceful relations in the 



512 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

Church, and of an actual yearning* among the brethren for more 
unity among themselves than for "a closer union with sister de- 
nominations." — An illustration of this is here given. 

In the year 1871, one of the Professors at Lancaster was invited, 
by the Rev. Fredrick Strassner, to attend a General Convention of 
the Ohio Synod, which was to be held in his own church at Orr- 
ville, Wayne county, Ohio, and to deliver a public lecture sometime 
during its sessions. He cheerfully accepted the invitation, be- 
cause he wished to see the country and learn how the churches 
were advancing. He thought he could cross the Ohio line without 
exciting remarks or suspicion, as he had been requested to lecture on 
some subject in science, at the meeting of the Synod. Such a topic 
surely would not touch on controverted points. His intercourse 
with the Western brethren was pleasant and fraternal. He was sur- 
prised to see that the old controversies seemed to be a thing of the 
past, and that the general feeling was in favor of the return of Unity 
and peace throughout the Church ; or, as Dr. Samuel B. Leiter ex- 
pressed it with much emphasis and feeling, "a better understanding 
with the brethren in the East." The aged ministers, Dr. David 
Kaemmerer, Dr. David H. Winters, and Dr. Peter Herbruck, with 
deep emotion, gave utterance to the same wish, and the younger 
brethren, Williard, Reiter, Lake, Herman, Zahner, Mease, Kefauver, 
Kendig, Leberman and others, breathed the same spirit of unit} r 
and concord, which seemed to please pastor Strassner amazingly. 
On his return home he prepared an article for both Church papers, 
giving his impressions of the Church in the West; directing at- 
tention to the kindly feelings of the Western brethren toward the 
East, and their desire to "come to a better understanding." The 
paper, it is said, was read with interest and received with favor. 
■ — -The unsophisticated Professor was not aware that he was in the 
hands of a son of Abraham, and that pastor Strassner was making 
use of him to initiate a peace movement, in his own waj T , until he 
told him all about it afterwards — a few years ago. 

In 1878 the General Synod met at Lancaster, Pa., and at the 
first session there was every indication of an ecclesiastical wran- 
gle or another theological tempest. The skies presented a leaden 
hue, and if the ocean did not exactly yawn, the winds at least 
rudely blew and seemed to toss the foundering bark. At first 
some brethren at Lancaster heartily wished that the Sjmocl had 
met somewhere else. Some thought it would be better to }'ield 
to the inevitable, and to form two General Assemblies. But at 
the right time, and in the right place, at an evening session, an 



Chap. XXXX] the return of peace 513 

Eastern member, Dr. Clement Z. Weiser, took the Synod by sur- 
prise, and in a series of well prepared -resolutions proposed that 
Commissioners should be appointed by the different Synods — then 
four in the East and two in the West — who should prepare a Basis, 
upon which all parts of the Church could stand and work in har- 
mony with each other. The proposition met with favor at once ; 
animated speakers advocated it without regard to party lines ; and 
the utmost good will pervaded the Synod, as well as the immense 
audience present. It was not long before the house was ready for 
the motion, but there was some demurring to the general wish; and 
it was urged that it would be the part of prudence to postpone the 
question until the next day. Motions to adjourn, however, one 
after another, were voted down, although it was growing late, until 
they became absolutely distasteful. 

At length some practical Elders understanding the situation com- 
bined together and determined to keep "these preachers " in the 
church until the great question was decided — if they should have 
to stay all night in their seats. At a late hour Dr. Weiser's reso- 
lutions were adopted — nemine contradicente. Every body was de- 
lighted, with few or no belligerent exceptions, and at the adjourn- 
ment of the Synod the whole body arose, and prompted by Rev. 
Dr. X. Gehr, a German, united in singing the German choral: 

Lobe den Uerrn, 
Ben mcechtigen Kamig der Ehren, 

concluding with the long metre cloxology, sung together in the 
German and English languages at the same time. The brethren 
then asunder parted with happy feelings, — with the belief that 
this meeting had had a good effect. — Thus, after a thirty years' 
war, the liturgical conflict ended ; peace was declared in the cit}^ 
of Lancaster in one of the oldest congregations in the Church, 
and under the shadow of her oldest classical and theological in- 
stitutions. 

The limits set by these memoirs will not allow us to pursue the 
history of the labors of the Peace Commissioners to bring about 
a general pacification, which would form an interesting chapter in 
itself. The action of the General Synod at Lancaster was in itself 
the declaration of peace, and accordingly, with the best wishes of the 
entire Church, they were successful as wise peace-makers in giving 
expression to the general feeling. They united upon a satisfactory 
Doctrinal Basis and, according to their instructions, published a 
revision of the Order of Worship, eliminating certain objectionable 
passages, without changing essentially its form or contents, and 



514 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

presented their report to the General Synod at Tiffin, Ohio, in 
1881. The Directory of Worship, as this fourth liturgy was called, 
was referred to the Classes and met with their approval without 
an}^ exception ; and after this fact came to be officially announced to 
the same body in 1887, it became formally the authorized Liturgy of 
the Reformed Church in the United States. It has all the merits 
of the Order of Worship, with only slight modifications of its 
objectionable features. — Congregations can use it as a whole, in 
part, or not at all, as the}' may deem best. — The names of the 
Peace Commissioners were as follows: Ministers, Clement Z. 
Weiser, Thomas G. Appel, Franklin W. Kremer, Jeremiah H. 
Good, Lewis H. Kefauver, Herman J. Ruetenik, Peter Greding, 
John M. Titzel, Joseph H. Appel, Samuel N. Callender, G. William 
Welker, John Kuelling; and Elders, Daniel W. Gross, William 
H. Seibert, Rudolph F. Kelker, Andrew H. Bangkman, Benjamin 
Kuhns, Frederick W. Scheele, Henry Tons, Christian M. Boush, 
Thomas J. Craig, Henry Wirt, Lewis H. Steiuer, and William D. 
Gross. — Thus ended the famous Liturgical Movement extending 
over many years, which must have been something useful to the 
Church as a whole, because it "ended well.' 1 



CHAPTER XLI 

AS the old Grecian philosopher felt the necessity of returning to 
- intellectual work after he had taught his neighbors how to 
cultivate olives, so Dr. Nevin found himself impelled to add intel- 
lectual to physical exercise. His pen gradually regained its activity, 
and he wrote for the Mercersburg Review some of his ablest and best 
articles. Occasionally he assisted in giving instructions to the 
college classes during the absence of one of the Professors. At the 
request of the Faculty he delivered an opening address at the be- 
ginning of the college term, and selected as his theme, "The Won- 
derful Nature of Man." We here give the address as it appeared 
in the July number of the Mercersburg Revieiv for the year 1859. 

Science, as it has to do with the world of Nature, unfolds to our 
view, in ever} T direction, objects and scenes of surpassing interest. 
Each different province of knowledge is found to embrace a whole 
universe of wonders, in some sense, within its own separate bounds. 
Who shall pretend to set limits to the grand significance, in this 
way, of Astronomy, of Geology, of Chemistry, of Natural History 
in all its divisions and branches? Nay, who may pretend to ex- 
haust the full sense of any single object or thing, included in these 
vast fields of scientific research? The relatively small here has its 
mysteries of wisdom, its miracles of power, no less than the rel- 
atively great. Yistas of overwhelming glory, stretching far away 
in boundless, interminable perspective, open upon us through the 
microscope and telescope alike. Every drop of water shows itself 
to be, in the end, an ocean without bottom or shore. The flowers 
of the field, the leaves of the forest, the worm that crawls upon the 
ground, the insect that sports its ephemeral life in the air, all, all 
are telling continual^ — in full unison with the everlasting moun- 
tains, with the rolling waves of the sea, with the starry firmament 
on high — the endless magnificence of God's creation; the music of 
earth rising up everywhere, like the sound of many waters, respon- 
sive to the music of the spheres, and echoing still forever, in uni- 
versal triumphant chorus, The hand that made us is divine. In 
whatever direction our eyes are turned, under the guiding light of 
science, above, beneath, and around, we are met with occasions for 
adoring admiration, and may well be led to exclaim with the Psalm- 

(515) 



516 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ist : " Lord, how manifold are Thy works? In wisdom hast Thou 
made them all; the earth is fall of Th} T riches." 

In the midst of all these wonders of Nature, however, it is easy 
to see that the central place belongs to Man himself. This indeed 
is plainly signified to us by the Mosaic account of the Creation, in 
the first chapter of Genesis ; where the different parts of the world 
are represented as coming into existence in a certain order and 
course; each lower stage opening the way always for a higher, and 
one part of the process leading over continually to another ; until 
all is made to end at last, on the sixth day, in the formation of 
Adam — as though the whole work previously had been concerned 
with the preparation simply of a fit platform or theatre, on which 
he, the last sense and crowning glory of all, was to be finally ushered 
into being. On this account, moreover, a new special solemnity 
is thrown around his advent, a sort of heavenly circumstance and 
pomp, showing forth sublimely the greatness of the occasion. All 
else being complete, and the preliminary arrangements of creation 
brought forward in order to this point, there follows as it were a 
pause in the process ; and then the voice of God is heard once more : 
" Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth."' Man thus is declared to be 
something higher and greater than the whole world of nature be- 
sides. He is the head of the natural creation. All its mysteries 
and glories culminate at last in his person, and find here only their 
full significance, their proper conclusion and end. 

The actual structure of the world, as it unfolds itself continually 
more and more to the observation of science, is found to be in 
striking agreement with this ancient representation of the Bible. 
It is plainly a single system throughout, subject everywhere to the 
presence of a common law, pervaded universally Irv the power of a 
common idea or thought, and reaching always, with inward restless 
nisus, toward a common end. The inorganic is in order to the 
organic. The ciystal is a prophecy of the coming plant. Rising 
continually from lower to higher and more perfect forms of exist- 
ence, the whole vegetable world serves to foreshadow, in like manner, 
the sphere of animal life above it. This again is an upward move- 
ment throughout, an ever ascending series of types and forms, 
reaching alwa} T s toward an ideal, which on to the last it has no 
power to actualize, but can faintl} T prefigure onty as something far 
more exalted and far more glorious than itself. The organic order 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 517 

comes to its rest ultimately in Man. He is the true ideal of the 
world's universal life, the last aim and scope, we may sa t y, of the 
whole natural creation. He is the fulfilment of all its prophecies, 
the key to its mysteries, the exposition of its deepest and most 
hidden sense. 

As being then, in such view, the last, full sense and meaning of 
the world, Man necessarily represents to us its main interest and 
gloiy , and must be more worthy of our regard than all it offers be- 
sides to our contemplation. It can be no extravagance to say, that 
his existence and presence in the s}^stem of nature set before us the 
greatest and strangest part of its wonderful constitution — a fact, 
which surpasses in significance, and transcends in interest, all its 
other phenomena and facts combined. Man is an object immeasur- 
ably more lofty and grand, in the universe of God's works, than the 
towering hills, the swelling seas, or the stars even, that look down 
upon him from their infinite distances in the calm, blue vault of 
heaven. He ranks higher in the scale of creation. He embraces in 
his being more stupendous realities, profounder mysteries, wider 
and far more enduring interests. Well might the Hebrew Singer 
cry out, overwhelmed as it were with the contemplation of his own 
nature : " I will praise Thee, Lord ; for I am fearfully and wonder- 
fully made : marvellous are Thy works ; and that my soul knoweth 
right well." Yes, of a truth, fearfully and wonderfully made. The 
declaration applies in full force to the entire being of Man. He is 
to be gazed upon with a sort of trembling admiration, first of all, 
in his simpty physical nature; still more so, afterwards, in his 
intellectual nature; but most of all, finally, in his moral nature — 
where only, at the last, the full boundless significance of his life, 
and along with this, the whole terrible sublimity of it also, may be 
said to burst completely into view. 

Look at him first in his simply physical nature. The human 
booty offers itself to our consideration at once, as the greatest and 
most finished work of God in the outward world. When we com- 
pare it with other natural objects, there is none which can be said 
to be equal to it, or like to it, either in conception or in actual ex- 
ecution and effect. 

So under a merely anatomical view. The more closety and care- 
fully we study its conformation and structure, as they are laid open 
to our observation by the dissecting knife — its framework of bones, 
its muscles and tendons, its nerves, its curious apparatus of the 
senses, its organs of action and motion, its marvellous dispositions 
and arrangements of stomach, lungs, heart, brain, the perfection, in 



518 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

one word, of all its parts, and their most admirable fitness for their 
several purposes and ends — the more deeply and thoroughly shall 
we be made to feel, that taken altogether, even in this dead mechan- 
ical light, there is indeed nothing so absolutely wonderful and com- 
plete, in the whole range of nature besides. 

But the case becomes of course still stronger a great deal, when 
we pass from anatonvy to physiology, and fix our attention not 
simply on the mechanism of the body in a state of rest, but on this 
same mechanism animated and set in motion everywhere by the 
powers and forces of life itself, working by it, and through it, for 
the accomplishment of their proper end. Such a sphere of wonders 
is here thrown open to our contemplation, as imvy be easily seen at 
once to leave far behind, in significance and interest, all that can 
be brought into comparison with it under any like physical form. 
Yast as the powers of nature may show themselves in other quar- 
ters, grand as the scale of their action may be, and however much 
of strange, amazing nryster}" may seem to enter into their processes, 
they bring after all no such results to pass airywhere, as can be 
said to match in any measure what is going forward continuall}- in 
the living constitution of the human body. 

What, for example, is the chemistry of nature, its dark mysterious 
processes going forward always in the deep places of the earth, its 
laboratory of wonders in the air and in the sky — where the winds 
are born — where the clouds come and go — where rain, snow, hail, 
lightning, and tempest issue continually from the same awful womb ; 
what is all this, we say, in comparison with what is taking place 
every daj- in eveiy such living bocly, by the process of digestion 
and assimilation; through which, all sorts of foreign material are 
received, in the shape of food, into the stomach, wrought silently 
into blood, and converted out of this finally into the very substance 
of all the different parts of the system — meeting thus its perpetual 
waste with perpetual renovation and supply. 

What is the ocean, with its world-embracing circulation — its 
waters lifted into the air, borne in every direction by the clouds, 
made to descend in showers upon the earth, gathered into streams, 
and poured at last through might} T rivers back again into their 
original bed; what is "this great and wide sea, wherein are things 
creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts," where the ships 
go, and where leviathan is made to pla}- ; what is the whole of it at 
last, in all its greatness, over against that wonder of wonders, the 
human heart, with its tidal flow of blood kept up da}' and night, 
and year after year, through the arteries and the veins ! 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 519 

What is the action of the winds, which come no one can tell 
whence, and go no one can tell whither, now fanning the earth in 
gentle zephyrs, and now sweeping over the face of it in hurricanes 
and storms, penetrating all things, purifying all things, stirring all 
things into motion and life; what is the action of the winds, we ask 
again, in this outward view, compared with the proper breath of 
life in man, received through his nostrils, and made to fulfil its un- 
resting twofold ministry by the marvellous economy of his lungs? 

Or the still more subtle forces of electricity and magnetism, as 
they are found to be constantly and powerfully at work everywhere, 
through the universal realm of nature, or as they are made to per- 
form miracles, at the present day, in obedience to the will of science 
and art; what are they, under either view, in comparison with the 
brain of man, and its dependent system of nerves, extending with 
infinite ramification to all parts of the body, and causing the whole 
to be filled at every point, and through every instant of time, with 
the unity of a common life? 

It is true indeed, that these physiological wonders themselves 
come before us, to a certain extent, on the outside of man's nature. 
They belong to the animal world in general. Here too the phe- 
nomena of sentient life, upheld and carried forward by organs and 
functions strangely adapted to its use, challenge in every direction 
our profound admiration. Bodily senses are here, vital activities, 
powers of digestion, secretion, and self-reparation, blood coursing 
through arteries and veins, the curious pla} T of lungs, and the work- 
ing more curious still of nerves and brain. Many animals seem 
even to surpass man, in particular aspects and features of their 
organization. He is excelled by some in strength; by others, in 
speed ; by others again, in special forms of natural art and ingenuity. 
Some have a more quick and acute sense of hearing; others a far 
more keen and wide reaching vision. In all directions around him, 
they show themselves qualified and fitted for modes of existence, 
which are for him impossible altogether. 

But all this detracts nothing in the end from the proper supe- 
rioritjr of his being, even in that merely physical view with which 
only we are now concerned. For it is easy enough to see, that any 
points of advantage, which may seem to belong to other animal or- 
ganizations, hold only in single subordinate particulars ; going thus 
to show the comparatively partial and narrow order of their life; 
while in any world of order and beauty, it was after all an imperfect 
symbol only of what took place in a higher form, when "the Lord 
God formed Man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 



520 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

nostrils the breath of life," causing him to become thus, through 
his own inspiration, a rational and intelligent soul. It was as if 
the whole work of creation, in its previous form, had been suddenly- 
flooded with fresh heavenly light, and kindled into new sense. For 
such in truth is the mj-sterious relation, which mind, as it lives and 
reigns in man, sustains through all time to the outward material 
world. In a profound sense, it may be said actually to make the 
world, imparting to it its whole form and meaning as it now stands. 
Not as if the s} T stem of nature had no existence, on the one side of 
man's intelligence and thought. It has a being of its own, we be- 
lieve, apart from all such apprehension. But what that is, we can 
never either know or guess. It offers to our contemplation nothing 
better than thick, impenetrable darkness. 

In such view, it is for us as though it did not exist at all. To 
become real for us, in an3 T way, the world must not only be; it 
must come into us also in the way of knowledge; and the forms of 
this knowledge, in the nature of the case, can be imparted to it only 
b} T our own minds. It is for us, therefore, only what it is made to 
be through our intelligence itself, and nothing more. Not only so ; 
but we must say the world itself is made for this mode of existence 
— what it comes to be by entering into the types and moulds of 
actual knowledge — as its only true and full perfection; so that, 
short of this, it must ever be a rude and unformed mass, carrying 
in it no right sense, and representing no proper reality whateA T er. 
Thus it is that the whole world is literally brought out of darkness 
into marvellous light, and reduced at the same time to full order 
and form, by the power of intelligence made to bear upon it through 
the mind of man. In the waking of consciousness, all nature may 
be said to wake together with him into new life. It takes shape 
everywhere in conformity with his perception and thought. It 
shines, and blooms, and sings, in obedience to the magical authority 
of his spirit. It lives, and has its being — such phenomenal being 
as we know it b} r — only in the orb of his mind. 

We have seen before, that the ph} T sical creation centres in the 
human bocby; and that this may well be dignified with the title of 
microcosm, for this reason, as gathering up into itself finally all 
the forms and forces of nature in its larger view, and so represent- 
ing in small compass its universal sense. But what is all this, .in 
comparison with the centralization that is here exhibited to us, in 
the constitution of the human soul? B} T this emphatically it is, 
that man becomes in the fullest sense a living microcosm, taking 
up into himself the very being of the great and mighty world 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 521 

around him, and so reflecting and showing forth the full sense of 
it, as it is not possible for it to be known in any other way. The 
vast, the manifold, the multitudinous in nature, is not simply re- 
duced here to relativery small bounds, as in the other case; it is 
brought down to absolute unity, and so made to pass away entirely 
in another order of existence altogether. In such view, the micro- 
cosm is more than the macrocosm — the world intelligible than the 
world diffused and spread abroad in space ; since it is wholly by the 
first alone, that the latter can ever be, at all, what it seems to be in 
any such outward form. 

Here, therefore, mere physical bulk and force, set over against 
the being of man, shrink into still greater insignificance than before. 
Are not mountains and seas, bellowing thunders, roaring cataracts 
and storms, comprehended truly in his spirit, and made to pass 
through it,. in order that they may be for him either outward or 
real? Why then should he stand aghast before them, and not feel 
rather in them, and by them, the yet more awful grandeur and over- 
whelming vastness of his own nature. Mind is infinitely greater 
than all that is not mind, enlarge the conception of this as we ma} r . 
It towers above the whole material creation. It outshines the stars. . 
It is a force more active and powerful by far, than that which bears 
along comets and planets in their course. The sun itself, in all its 
majestic splendor, is an object less high aud glorious, than the soul. 
even of an infant, carrying in it the latent power of thought, the 
undeveloped possibilit}^ of reason. 

We have spoken of the plrysical action of the brain, as something 
greatly more wonderful than that of the most subtle forces in nature 
under any different form. But what is this in its turn, when we 
come to compare it with the activity of thinking itself, which, how- 
ever it may depend upon the working of the brain, is yet not that 
simph^, but another order of force and energy altogether ? Thought 
is more free than air, more penetrating than fire, more irresistible 
and instantaneous in motion than lightning. It travels at a rate, . 
which causes the velocity of light to appear sluggish and slow. It 
traverses the earth, and sweeps the heavens, at a single bound. In 
the twinkling of an eye, it passes to the planet Saturn, to the Sun, 
to the star Sirius, to the utmost bounds of the universe. 

We have spoken of the circulation of the blood, as something 
more fearfully grand than the waters above the firmament, and the 
waters under the firmament revolving continually through the 
heart-resembling ministry of oceans and seas. But what is all this 
to the mystery of consciousness — that broad, unfathomable sea in 
33 * 



522 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

the human spirit, which serves to set in motion all its activities and 
powers, out of whose depths all knowledge proceeds, and into whose 
bosom again they continually return ! 

Every faculty of the mind is a subject for admiration, from mere 
sensation up to the use of reason in its purest and most perfect 
form. The images of conception, the reproductions of fancy, the 
new combinations and grand creative processes of the imagination, 
the operations of judgment, the intuitional apprehensions involved 
in the power of ideas — time would fail us to speak of them in any 
way of particular detail; but what realms of interest, what worlds 
of thrilling wonder, do they not all throw open to our view! 

Let any one consider only for a moment what is continually going 
forward within us, in the familiar process which is known to us b} 7 
the name of memory. Nothing so simple, it might seem, at first 
view; and yet, the moment we stop to think of it, nothing more 
profoundly mysterious and strange. Images and thoughts are con- 
tinually entering the consciousness of the mind, and then disap- 
pearing from it again, as though they were entirely lost. But they 
are in fact only .buried, and hidden away, in the secret depths of 
the mind itself, so as to be capable of being resuscitated, and called 
back again^ whenever their presence may be required; and in this 
way they are in truth all the time coming and going, appearing and 
disappearing, in our ordinal thinking. What we hold in our in- 
telligence thus is only in small part ever contained in our actual 
consciousness, at any given time. By far the most of it is in us 
always under a latent, slumbering form. And yet it all enters into 
our spiritual being, is truly part of ourselves, and goes to make up 
continually the proper contents of our personality. 

But what a marvel this is; that so much of our knowledge should 
be in the mind and yet out of mind, at the same time; that our 
sense of self should hold joined with it in this way such a vast 
multitude of conceptions, thoughts, and ideas, such a whole world 
of past experiences and affections, which nevertheless are in general 
as much unperceived as though the} 7 did not exist at all, and only 
come into view occasionally and transiently, ever rising and ever 
sinking, ever entering and ever departing — an endless succession 
-of vanishing forms, in what remains throughout after all the indi- 
visible, unbroken unity of one and the same consciousness. To 
stand on the shore of such an ocean, to look forth on its broad, 
boundless expanse — to send the imagination clown among the 
secrets that lie buried, far out of sight, in its dark and silent depths 
— may indeed well produce in any thoughtful mind an overwhelm- 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 523 

ing sentiment both of astonishment and awe. There is neither 
height nor depth, nor show of vastness and sublimity under any 
other form, in the simply physical world that may bear to be placed 
in comparison with it for a single moment. 

The case swells upon us into its full significance, only when we 
come to ask, Can that which has once been in the mind, so as to 
be part and parcel of its consciousness, ever so pass out of it again 
as to sink into everlasting oblivion? Some thoughts, we know, re- 
turn upon us readily and easily in our ordinary experience, lying 
as it were near at hand to us all the time ; others are recalled with 
more difficult} 7 , as having got farther out of reach; while others 
again, the largest class of all, seem to have sunk like lead in the 
mighty waters, to be remembered by us no more forever. 

But who will pretend to distinguish here, between what is still 
within the reach of memory, and what has become for it thus as 
though it had never been? Who will undertake to say at what 
point of time, or under what terms and conditions otherwise, that 
which has once been the property of the spirit, in the way of 
thought, shall be so sundered and alienated from, it as to pass irre- 
coverably and entirely out of its possession ? The grand wonder 
is, how the past should return at all, and become thus the matter 
of present consciousness and knowledge — a thing past and yet 
present at the same time; that it should do so after a short interval, 
or do so after a long one, would seem to be in the case a distinc- 
tion of no material account. If the power of memoiy may bridge 
in this way the chasm of an hour, why not with equal ease, the ob- 
livion of a year or the dark void of a thousand years? We know 
in fact, that what has thus slumbered in us through long periods of 
time does often wake up within our consciousness at last, in the 
most surprising manner. 

In old age especially, nothing is more common than such a resur- 
rection of long buried images and thoughts. In many cases, the 
circumstances and experiences of childhood and early youth, after 
being forgotten for scores of years, are so restored to memory 
again as to seem only of recent date. Persons recovered from 
drowning have said, that in the middle state, to which they were 
brought between life and death, a whole world of such buried recol- 
lections seemed to pass before them in panoramic vision. We have 
been told of others, who, in circumstances of extreme danger, fall- 
ing from a precipice for instance, or exposed to the jaws of death 
in some like violent wa} r , have had their whole past lives, as it ap- 
peared, brought back upon them with a sort of instantaneous rush, 



524 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

Who, in view of such cases, may presume to limit the possibilities 
of memory ? And who that thinks of it may not well be filled with 
amazement, rising even to terror itself, in considering what is in- 
volved for himself, in the awful abyss, which is found thus yawning 
before him continually in the depths of his own soul? 

But it is in his moral nature most of all, that Man comes before 
us finally in the fall terrible sublimit}^ of his being — ''fearfully and 
wonderfully made," bej'ond all the wonders of creation under any 
different form. 

There is a close, necessary connection, of course, between the 
moral and the intellectual. Reason and Will, thought and action, 
flow together, and as it were interpenetrate each other continually, 
in the constitution of the mind. There can be no act of intelligence 
without volition; and there can be no exercise of volition without 
intelligence. Still thinking and willing are not the same thing; 
and there is full room, therefore, for distinguishing between the in- 
tellectual nature of man as based upon his reason, and the moral 
nature of man, as based upon his will. It is eas} T enough to see, more- 
over, that the relation is of such a kind as to place the moral na- 
ture, in point of dignity and worth, above the intellectual. If it 
be asked, where the economj- of the mind is to be regarded as com- 
ing to its main end, its grand ultimate purpose and meaning, the 
answer must be, in that part of it which is represented to us by the 
idea of the will. Thought is rightly in order to action; knowledge 
in order to freedom. The practical reason is greater than the specu- 
lative reason. Truth in the understanding must become truth in 
the will also, if it is ever to be either spirit or life. 

We have seen already, that the human mind is in fact the revela- 
tion in the world of a new order of existence altogether ; a result, 
which serves to satisfy and fulfil the universal sense of the physical 
creature, struggling up to it through all its realms of existence, and 
that might seem to be thus, in one view, the last product of this 
process itself; while it is yet plain, that in reaching it nature is 
actually carried beyond itself, and met, as it were, in its own sphere 
Iry the power of a higher life, descending into it from above. Con- 
sidered as the mere passive counterpart of nature under a spiritual 
view — the mirror simph T of its multitudinous forms, the echo only 
of its manifold voices and sounds — such a manifestation is indeed 
wonderful in the hio-hest degree. But the full force of the wonder 
comes into view, only when we look beyond this, and see the mind 
to be at the same time a fountain of power, a principle of free spon- 
taneous action, in its own nature, not only open to impressions re- 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 525 

ceptively from the world around, but capable also of working back 
upon the world again, and as it were over against it, in the most 
original and independent way. This is the idea of the Will. 

There is no power or force like it, under any other form, in the 
system of creation. Physically considered, the world is a consti- 
tution carried forward in the way of inward, settled and fixed law, 
causes producing effects continually, and effects following causes, 
with a certainty which admits of no variation or exception. The 
whole process, in such view, is necessary, blind and unfree. So in 
the sphere of mere lifeless matter; so in the sphere of vegetation; 
and so in the sphere also of animal life. The actions of animals 
are determined absolutely by influences exerted upon them from 
without, through their natural appetites and instincts. Neither is 
the case different with the animal nature of man, in itself con- 
sidered. This likewise stands connected with the physical world 
by organic relations, which involve the same kind of subjection to 
its laws that is found to prevail in lower spheres. Appetite, desire, 
inclination, passion, in man, are in this view, so far as their origi- 
nal form is concerned, responses simply to other .forces in the sys- 
tem of nature, and as such include in themselves neither light nor 
freedom. 

The difference here, however, is the conjunction in which these 
forms of merely natural life are set with a power above nature in 
man, which may indeed lend itself to their service in a base, passive 
way, but whose rightful prerogative it is rather to rule them always 
in subserviency to its own ends. This power, the practical reason 
— the will in its proper form — is no agency that serves merely to 
carry into effect what has been made necessary by the working of 
causes going before. If that were the case, it would at once lose 
its distinctive character, and be nothing more at last than the con- 
tinuation of nature itself, under a new sublimated and refined form. 
But the very conception of will implies and involves the contrary 
of this. It is, by its very constitution, a self-determining power. 

It is no blind, necessary force, like the laws of nature, but a free, 
spontaneous activity, which knows itself, and moves itself option- 
ally its own way; giving rise thus to a whole universe of relations, 
interests, actions and systems of action, which but for such origi- 
nation could have no existence whatever, and which, however it may 
be joined with the constitution of nature, and made to rest upon it 
in some sense as a basis, is nevertheless in fact a new world al- 
together of far higher and far more glorious character. 

Let it be considered only, for a moment, what this hyper-physical 



526 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

economy — the moral world as distinguished from the world of na- 
ture — is found to comprehend and contain. It comprises in itself 
all the powers, functions, and operations of mind; the thinking of 
men; their purposes and aims ; their affections, emotions, and pas- 
sions; their acts of whatever kind, whether inward only or extend- 
ing out into the surrounding world; the full unfolding and putting 
forth, in one word, of all that is involved in their spiritual being. 
In it are embraced, at the same time, the idea of society, the order 
of the family, the constitution of the State, the organization finally 
of the Church; all social, political, and religious relations; all vir- 
tues and opposing vices; all human privileges, duties, and rights. 

It is the sphere emphatically, thus, of whatever is comprehended 
in the conception of education and history; being made up mainl} T 
in fact, not so much of present experiences simply at any given 
time, as of a whole world rather of past experiences, consolidated 
together, and handed forward continually from one generation to 
another. What a mass of material, accumulated in this way through 
ages, goes to form the proper ethical life of civilized nations — the 
historical substance, we ma} r call it, of their nationality — strangely 
treasured up in their language, their institutions and laws, their 
manners and customs, their traditions and hereditary memories of 
the ancient past ! Among animals there is no 1 education, and no 
histoiy. The ideas are purely and exclusively human. They be- 
long only to the world of intelligence and freedom. 

We have spoken of the self-moving nature of the will, its inde- 
pendence of all outward constraint, its power to originate action in 
its own wa}^. This freedom, however, forms only one side of its 
marvellous constitution. Under another view, it is just as much 
bound by the force of necessary law as the constitution of matter 
itself. The only difference in the two cases is, that in nature the 
law carries itself into effect as it were by its own force, while in the 
moral world it cannot go into effect at all, unless hy the free choice 
and consent of the will itself which it thus necessitates and binds. 
The necessity, to prevail at all, must pass into the form of freedom. 
But this does not detract in the least from the idea of its authorit}- 
and force. The distinction serves only, in truth, to clothe it with 
greater dignity and glory. 

In this view, the law of nature, in all its generality and con- 
stanc} 7 , is but the type, in a lower sphere, of the universal and un- 
changeable character of the law, as it exists for freedom in a higher 
sphere. The first mystically adumbrates, for all thoughtful minds, 
the wonderful presence of the second. Some such thought seems 



Chap. XLI] the wonderful nature of man 527 

to have been in the mind of the ancient Psalmist, when he was 
led to exclaim : " Forever, Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven ! 
Thy faithfulness is unto all generations ; Thou hast established 
the earth, and it abideth." How many have been made to feel at 
times, in the same way, the sense of God's glorious moral gov- 
ernment mirrored upon them from the contemplation of the natu- 
ral world. 

" There are two things," the celebrated philosopher Kant was 
accustomed to say, "which I can never sufficiently wonder at and 
admire — the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within 
me." The thought is at once beautiful and profound; for there 
can be no more fitting image, in truth, of the grandeur and sub- 
limity of this inward law, than that which is offered to our gaze 
in the silent., tranquil, ever during majesty of the stars. 

Along with the presence of the law again, in this department of 
our being, comes into view what is, in some respects, the most won- 
derful part of our whole nature, the power with which we are so 
familiar under the name of conscience. As a necessary and bind- 
ing rule for freedom, it lies in the very conception of the moral 
law, that it should be able to assert its presence, and make its 
authoritjr felt, in the mind itself, and not be brought near to it 
merely in the character of an outward and foreign force. And thus 
it is in truth, that the will is found to be actually autonomic, affirm- 
ing and laying down in one direction the very rule, which it feels 
itself called upon to obey in another. Not as if it could be sup- 
posed actually to originate the law in this way, according to its 
own pleasure. That would be a monstrous imagination, subverting 
the whole idea of morality. 

The will does not make the law ; but still it is through it alone, 
that the law comes to an}^ positive legislation in the soul. In no 
other way, can the full force of the categorical imperative, Thou 
shaltjbe brought fairly home to its consciousness. What a strange 
spectacle, then, we have exhibited to us here. Two forces in the 
same mind, transacting with one another in such solemn personal 
way. Here the will commands ; while there again the very same 
will is required to obey. Nor is that all. The power that legislates 
in the case, goes on also to sit in judgment on its own conduct, 
and then to execute sentence upon itself according to the result of 
such trial. Obedience brings at once self-approbation, and is fol- 
lowed with peace. Disobedience leads just as certainly to self- 
condemnation and self-inflicted pain. Such is the terrific mystery 
of conscience — the knowing of God brought into man's knowing 



528 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

of himself, and made to be thus an inseparable part of his proper 
spiritual being and life. 

We conclude the whole subject with the obvious reflection, that 
the richest and most interesting field of science for man is that 
which is offered to him in the constitution of his own person, and 
especially, in the constitution of his person under its ethical or 
moral view. The world may be worthy of our thoughts and stud- 
ies, in its other aspects ; but it can be properly so, at all times, 
only as it is studied, under such aspects, with full regard to what 
must ever be considered its last central interest in the form now 
stated. No wonders of the simply outward creation, no myster- 
ies of mere nature, can ever signify as much for us, as the world 
we carry about with us continually in our own being. 



CHAPTER XLII 

DURING this period the mind of Dr. Nevin, to a certain extent, 
ran in the same direction as that of Dr. Horace Bushnell, of 
Hartford, Conn., and he accordingly gave his works a careful study 
and examination. He noticed his recent book on "Nature and the 
Supernatural, as together constituting the One System of God," in 
the April number of the Mercer sburg Review for 1859, in an elabo = 
rate article on "The Natural and the Supernatural," of which only 
the more important paragraphs can here be given. 

A truly interesting work, as may be easily presumed at once from 
its authorship and title. No subject could well be more important, 
especially for the present time, than that which is here brought into 
view; and there are few men better fitted than Dr. Bushnell to dis- 
cuss any theme of the sort in an earnest, vigorous, and manly wa3^. 
We welcome the book, with all our heart, as a most valuable acces- 
sion to the theological literature of the age, and trust that it may 
exert a large and wide influence in the service of truth. It is no 
hasty production, but the carefully studied and well digested treat- 
ment of a great question, which has been before the mind of the 
author for years, and on which plainly he has bestowed the w r hole 
force of his ripest and best thoughts. The book, therefore, is one 
which requires study also on the part of the reader. It is not just 
of the current literature sort, formed for the easy entertainment of 
the passing hour. It grapples with what the writer holds to be the 
religious life-questions of the age; its course is everywhere, more 
or less, through inquiries which are felt to be both intricate and 
profound. And yet with all this, the work is never either heavy or 
dull. On the-contraiy, it may be said to overflow with genial life. 
Dr. Bushnell has contrived to throw into it the full vivacity and 
freshness of his own nature. It is rich throughout with thoughts 
that breathe, and words that glow and burn. A sort of poetical 
charm is made to suffuse the entire progress of its argument, reliev- 
ing the severity of the discussion and clothing it oftentimes with 
graphic interest and force. Altogether the book is one which de- 
serves to live, and that may be expected to take its place, we think, 
among the enduring works of the age. It is of an order, in this 
view, with Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks ; and as an argu- 

(529) 



530 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ment for the truth of the Christian religion, may compare favorably 
with Reinhard's Plan of the Founder of Christianity. 

So much we ma}' say, without pretending to endorse in full the 
course of thought presented in Dr. Buslmell's book. The worth 
and importance of such a work are not to be measured simply by 
what may be considered the validity of its opinions at particular 
points. We may find reason to question man}- of its propositions 
— we may feel ourselves constrained to pause doubtfully in the 
presence of much to which it challenges our assent — and yet be 
fairly and rightly bound, notwithstanding, to own and honor its 
superiority, as shown in the profound significance of its general 
thesis, the reigning scope of its discussion, the reach and grasp of 
its argument taken as a whole. The claim to such respectful 
homage, in the case before us, is one in regard to which there can 
be no dispute. 

We agree full} T with Dr. Bushnell, in believing the tendency of 
the present time to be fearfully strong toward Rationalism — that 
form of infidelity, which seeks to destroy Christianity, not so much 
in the way of direct opposition to its claims, as by endeavoring to 
drag it down from its own proper supernatural sphere into the 
sphere of mere nature, making it thus to be nothing more in the 
end than a particular phase simply of natural religion itself. On 
both sides of the Atlantic, we find a large amount of intelligence 
enlisted openly in the defence of this view; seeking, with no small 
measure of learning and ingenuity, to resolve all the higher aspects 
of the Gospel into poetry and myth, and pretending to bring out 
the full sense of it at last in the experiences of a purely human- 
itarian culture. 

But it would be a most inadequate view of the case, to suppose 
the evil of such unbelief confined to any formal demonstrations of 
this sort. As a silent tendency — a power secretly at work to sap 
the foundations of faith and piety — the rationalistic spirit in ques- 
tion takes in a vastly wider range of action. Multitudes, as Dr. 
Bushnell observes, are involved in it virtually as a s\ T stem of 
thought, without being themseh T es aware of the fact. They profess 
to honor Christianity as a divine revelation, take its language famil- 
iarhy upon their lips, persuade themselves, it may be, that they con- 
tinue strictly lo3 T al to its heavenly authorit} T ; and yet all the time 
they are false in fact to its claims, casting it down from its proper 
excellency, and substituting for it in their minds another order of 
thought altogether. In this way, we are surrounded on all sides 
with a nominal Christianity, which is little better in truth than a 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 531 

sort of baptized Paganism, putting us off continually with henthen- 
ish ideas expressed in Christian terms. 

Our public life is full of such essential infidelity. It reigns in 
our politics. It has infected our universal literature. The period- 
ical press floods the land with it eveiy week. It makes a merit 
generally indeed of being friendly to religion ; but it is plain enough 
to see, that what it takes to be religion is something widely different 
from the old faith of the Gospel in its strictly supernatural form. 
It is, when all is done, naturalism only, of the poorest kind, dressed 
up in evangelical modes of speech. That it should be able to pass 
current for anything better — that the public at large, the so-called 
Christian public, should show itself so widely willing to accept any 
such authority as having any sort of force in matters of religion — 
is only itself a most painful sign of that general weakening of faith, 
of which we are now speaking as the great moral malady of the 
times. Already too the disease has entered deep into our systems 
of education; and there is but too much reason to fear, that its 
worst fruit on this ground is yet to come. 

We feel the full force of what Dr. Bushnell says on this subject. 
As an argument for the supernatural truth of Christianity against 
the naturalistic tendencies of the age, his book is altogether timely. 
The evil enters into all spheres and departments of our modern 
life. It needs to be met in a bold and strong w r ay. ' ; We undertake 
the argument," says the distinguished author, "from a solemn con- 
viction of its necessity, and because we see that the more direct ar- 
guments and appeals of religion are losing their power over the 
public mind and conscience. This is true especially of the young, 
who pass into life under the combined action of so many causes, 
conspiring to infuse a distrust of whatever is supernatural in relig- 
ion. Persons farther on in life are out of the reach of these new 
influences, and, unless their attention is specially called to the fact, 
have little suspicion of what is going on in the mind of the rising 
classes of the world- — more and more saturated every day with this 
insidious form of unbelief. And yet we all, with perhaps the ex- 
ception of a few who are too far on to suffer from it, are more or less 
infected with the same tendency. Like an atmosphere, it begins to 
envelop the common mind of the world. We frequently detect its 
influence in the practical difficulties of the young members of the 
churches, who do not even suspect the true cause themselves. In- 
deed, there is nothing more common than to hear arguments ad- 
vanced, and illustrations offered by the most evangelical preachers, 
that have no force or meaning, save what they get from the current 



532 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

naturalism of the day. We have even heard a distinguished and 
careiulhv orthodox preacher deliver a discourse, the very doctrine 
of which was inevitable, unqualified naturalism. Logically taken, 
and carried out to its proper result, Christianit} 7 could have had no 
ground of standing left, — so little did the preacher himself under- 
stand the true scope of his doctrine, or the mischief that was be- 
ginning to infect his conceptions of the Christian truth." 

Dr. Bushnell's argument for the supernatural is made to rest cen- 
trally upon the person of Jesus Christ. This constitutes its main 
beauty and force. It forms the best distinction, and greatest merit, 
of the later modern theology generally, so far as it shows itself to 
be possessed of power and life, that it seeks more and more to make 
Christ in this way the principle of all faith and knowledge ; taking 
up thus anew, as it were, the grand Christological views of the Xi- 
cene age, and laboring to carry them out in full order and harmony 
to their last results. Great praise is due here to the mighty genius 
of Schleiermacher; who, however defective his own views of the 
person of Christ were, may be said to have inaugurated a new era 
of theolog}^ in German}^ by forcing attention to this point as the 
true beginning of all reality and certainty in religion. Under the 
inspiration of this thought, all theological studies there might seem 
to have started again into fresh vigorous life, rising from the tomb 
into which they had been cast hy the melancholy reign of nation- 
alism in previous times. A new interest was felt to be infused into 
all the facts and doctrines of revelation, b} T the light which was 
shed upon them from the acknowledged centre of the Christian 
system. They acquired a deeper significance, and became in this 
way subjects for more earnest inquny and profound study. Christo- 
logical thinking — that which, instead of looking primarily to the 
things taught and done b}- Christ, fixes its whole gaze at once on 
the mystery of His person, the glorious fact of the Incarnation, and 
uses this as a commentary and key for the right understanding of 
all things besides — has come to pervade and rule more or less all 
spheres of religious science. 

The method is so plainly founded in the very nature of Chris- 
tianity, and grows forth so immediately from the apprehension of 
its supernatural character, that it must prevail more and more, not 
onhv in German y, but in all other countries also, wherever it may 
be felt necessary to deal earnestly with the mysteries of religion, 
over against the growing naturalism of the age. If these are to 
be upheld successfully as objects of faith, transcending the con- 
stitution of nature, it can only be hy falling back upon their ulti- 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 533 

mate ground in Christ, and asserting, in the first place, the absolute 
verity of His person, as the principle and source of what is thus to 
be regarded as a new creation altogether. Not only our systematic 
divinity, but our homiletic teaching also, needs to be fortified in 
this wa}^ against the downward tendenc} T of the times, by being 
brought back to what is substantially the method of the old 
Apostles' Creed — that most simple, but at the same time most 
grand and sublime confession, into which, as a mould, the faith of 
'the universal Church was cast in the beginning. 

The position of Christ, His relations to the world, all the aspects 
of His character, all His works and all His pretensions, are brought 
into view everywhere as being in full unison and harmony with His 
bold claim to a heavenly and divine origin. His birth is by the 
Holy Ghost ; on which account He is called the Son of God. Angels 
herald His advent into the world. The powers of heaven descend 
upon Him at His baptism. He is no prophet simply among men, 
closing the Old Testament line, but the bearer of truth and grace 
in His own person. A new order of existence opens upon the 
world, in the mystery of His being. In Him was life — life in its 
original, fontal form — and the life became the light of men. It 
was not His office, therefore, primarily, to publish the truth as 
something different from Himself, to mediate between earth and 
heaven, man and God, in any mere outward way. His own being 
constituted the deepest and last sense of the Gospel, the burden of 
its overwhelming mystery. " I am the Way," we hear Him saying, 
"the Truth, and the Life" — not the index simply to these things, 
but the actual presence and power of the things themselves. " I 
am the Resurrection and the Life" — not the promise and pledge only 
of such glorious boon, but the full realization of it as a fact now 
actually at hand in my person. For "he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die." Again, "He that believeth in 
me hath everlasting life — Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." 
God was in Him, reconciling the world unto Himself. He is the 
propitiation for our sins — our righteousness — our peace — the or- 
ganism of our redemption — the everlasting theatre of % our salvation. 
He stands in the world a vast stupendous miracle — the miracle of 
a new creation. He is greater than all the powers, higher than all 
the glories of the natural world. Nay, He is before all things, and 
by Him, and in Him, all things consist. His life, therefore, included 
in itself, from the beginning, even under its human form, the prin- 



534 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ciple of full victory over all the vanity and miser}" which are in the 
world through sin ; so that when He went down into the grave, and 
descended into hades, it was onLv that He might return again, lead- 
ing captivity captive, and ascend up on high, to inaugurate His 
kingdom, in its proper spiritual form, as a new immortal constitu- 
tion, against which the gates of hell should have no power to pre- 
vail to the end of time. 

So lofty, so wide, so every way large, be} T ond all the measures of 
man's merely natural life, or simply human histor}", are the term's 
and representations in which the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, in wonderful, unfaltering consistency with itself 
throughout, bears witness to its own origin, character, and power. 
If it be not in the fullest sense — first in the person of Christ Him- 
self, and then in the outworkings and ongoings of His grace and 
power in the system of Christianity as a whole — the presence of a 
new supernatural life in the world, an order of existence which was 
not in it before, and which is not in it still bej^ond the reach and 
range of this fact; if it be not this, we say, and nothing short of 
this, then must it be denounced at once as being the most daring 
and wicked imposture ever practiced upon the credulity of the 
human race. 

But let any one pause now, to consider what an amount of peril 
is involved in so vast and broad a claim, and to what an ordeal 
Christianity has necessarily subjected itself, in presuming to take 
this lofty position, and thus binding itself to satisfy in full the 
terms and conditions of its own world-embracing problem. A 
consistent fiction is hard in any case, where it has to do with con- 
crete realities under a known form, and is allowed to extend itself 
at all to specific details ; but it becomes, of course, more and more 
difficult, and at last is found to be utterly impracticable, in propor- 
tion precisely as the points to be met and answered in this way be- 
come more and more significant, multitudinous, and complex. Sup- 
pose Christianity then to be such an invention — a bold hypothesis 
merebv, got up to solve the inmost meaning of the world's life, and 
to play off in spectral style a supernatural economy of salvation, 
commensurate with all the wants and aspirations of our fallen race 
— and how certainly may it not be expected to break down, by its 
own incongruities and contradictions, almost immediately at every 
point? Never did a scheme of religion, surely, offer itself of its 
own accord to a more searching trial of its merits and claims. 

For the supernatural here is no transient phenomenon merely, 
no fantastic avatar, no theophanj^ only in the Old Testament style; 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 535 

much less a doctrine simply, or theosophic speculation. It is made 
to challenge our faith and homage, as an abiding fact, linking itself 
organically with the general life of the world, and carrying it out 
historically to its highest and last sense. It must then be supremely 
natural, as well as overwhelmingly supernatural ; no product of 
nature plainly, and yet in such harmony with it, that it shall seem 
to be at the same time its full outbursting glory and necessary per- 
fection. The relation between God's first creation, and that which 
claims to be in this way God's second creation, may not be con- 
ceived of as contradictory, violent, or abrupt. The divine economy 
which embraces both — proceeding, as it does, from the mind of Him 
to whom all his works are known from the beginning — must be a 
single system at last, in absolute harmony with itself throughout. 

The whole constitution of the world, therefore, both physical 
and moral, must be found to come to its proper conclusion in 
Christ, showing him to be in very deed the Alpha and Omega, the 
Beginning and the End, of all God's works. 

The physical must show itself every where the mirror of the 
spiritual and heavenly, as these come out fully at last only in the 
form of Christian^, not as having any power to make them 
known by its own light originally ; but as answering to them, in 
the way of universal parable, when it comes to be shone upon from 
their higher sphere ; even as to the mind of Christ Himself, the 
birds of the air, and the flowers of the field, become types and 
symbols of righteousness at once, the moment they are needed for 
am r such purpose. 

In its whole organization again, the physical, as being plainly a 
progressive order of things reaching towards the unity of some 
common end, must put on the character of a ground preparation 
and prophecy, from first to last, looking continually to the Advent 
of Christ as the only sufficient fulfilment of its sense. This it will 
be found to do, if it have no power to stop in its own order or to 
come to an end in itself, but be forced and driven, as it were, up- 
ward and forward alwa} r s, from one stage and level of existence to 
another — each lower range foreshadowing still the necessary ap- 
proach of a higher — till it gains its full summit finally in man ; and 
so transcends itself, if we may use such an expression, in the pres- 
ence of a new moral world, which afterwards again shows itself in 
its own turn unable in like manner to come to any pause or rest, 
till it is filled out and made complete by the supernatural grace of 
the Gospel. 

It will be then, more especially, as tried by the actual conditions 



536 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

of this moral world — the circumstances and necessities of our gen- 
eral human life — that the Christian S3 T stem, in the view now under 
consideration, must pass through its severest ordeal. Its theory 
of humanity must be such as to fall in plainly with the actual con- 
dition of humanity in the world ; while all the lines of history, and 
all the deeper forces of man's life, shall be found everywhere strug- 
gling toward it. and either consciously or unconsciously bearing 
witness to its claims. 

The general fact of man's sin and misery must be such, as to 
agree with the hypothesis of a strictly supernatural redemption. 
If the evil were found to be of a superficial character ouly, neither 
deeper nor broader in fact than the measure of our life in its ordi- 
nary natural form — and in such view capable, accordingly, of being 
surmounted in some way by the powers and possibilities of this 
life in its own sphere, — the idea of a redemption descending into it 
from above, in the form of a new creation brought to pass by the 
nry stery of the Incarnation, would be convicted at once of being 
unreasonable and false. To justify au}- such mystery, it must ap- 
pear that sin is a disorder which underlies the universal nature of 
man as it now stands ; that it is itself a sort of supernatural fall 
or lapse in his life ; that the whole present order of his existence 
is subjected to vanity and death by reason of it ; that all other 
remedial agencies brought to bear upon the case, philosophical, ed- 
ucational, political, socialistic, and such like, have proved them- 
selves thus far, and must prove themselves, utterly inadequate to 
its demands, coming, as it were, infinitely short of the last ground 
and seat of the evil ; that it can be conquered, therefore, and rolled 
back in its consequences, if conquered ever at all, only by a force 
deeper and more comprehensive than the whole order of the world 
in its natural view, which, as such, shall show itself sufficient at 
the same time to break through this order altogether, and to rise 
above it, abolishing death itself, and bringing life and immortalit} T 
to light. The New Testament doctrine of Christ involved neces- 
sarily a corresponding doctrine of man. No Pelagian Anthro- 
pology, denying or slurring over the fact of Original Sin, can move 
hand in hand, in one and the same line, with a strictty theanthropic 
Christology. 

It must appear still farther, if Christianity be true, that the re- 
ligious life of the world generally, under what may be denominated 
its merelv natural form, looks toward it, calls for it, reaches after 
it in all manner of wa} r s, and finds the burden of its dark riddle 
fully solved at last only in its august presence. Rooted as the} T 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 537 

are in the same ground, the constitution of human nature itself, all 
religions must have to some extent a common character, must be 
concerned with the same problems, must work themselves out into 
more, or less analogous results. The relation then of the absolutely 
true religion to religions that are false, can not be regarded as one 
of abrupt and total difference; it should be taken rather to resem- 
ble the relation that holds between man in the natural creation and 
the manifold forms of animal life in the world below him — which, 
however far they may fall short of his perfection, carry in them- 
selves, notwithstanding, though it may be in very distorted and 
fantastic style, some portion still of the idea which is finally dis- 
closed in his person, and thus join in foreshadowing this darkly 
from all sides as their own last end and only proper meaning. 
False religions, in such view, should open a wide field of analogical 
comparison, serving to establish the idea of religion in its true 
form; not as leading over to it in their own order, not as being on 
the same plane with it in any sense; but as bringing into view 
wants, aspirations, questions, problems, soul-mysteries in every 
shape, which only the true religion at last is able fully to satisfy 
and solve. Should the grand supernatural facts and doctrines of 
Christianity seem to be met in this way with dull echoes and wild 
visionary caricatures of their heavenly sense, in the mythologies 
of the heathen world, the fact would form certainly no ground of 
objection to its claims, but only a powerful argument in their favor. 
Heathenism ought to be, in such manner, through it whole wide em- 
pire of darkness and sin, an unconscious prophecy of Him, who pro- 
claims Himself the desire of all nations and the light of the world. 

All History again must come to its proper unity in Christ, if He 
be indeed what he is made to be in the Gospel. Here, as in the 
constitution of Nature, God must have a plan in harmony with it- 
self throughout; and this plan can not possibly go aside from His 
main thought and purpose in the government of the world. It 
must centre in the Incarnation. 

Then after all this, what a range of comparison and trial for the 
Christian system is presented to us in the general economy of 
Revelation itself! For this is no single or narrow fact simply; nor 
yet a multitude of separate, disjointed facts; but a vast and mighty 
organization of facts rather, involving the most manifold relations, 
and reaching through long ages back to the very beginning of the 
world. Religion in this form is exhibited to us under different dis- 
pensations, and yet as being always the same, from the first obscure 
promise in the garden of Eden down to the fulness of time, when 
34 



538 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

the Word became Flesh and tabernacled among men in the person 
of Jesus Christ. " God," we are told, " who at sundry times and in 
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 
hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom he hath 
appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds." 
All these voices of old then — in paradise, before the flood and after 
the flood, through the patriarchs, in the giving of the law, and by 
the whole long line of the prophets from Moses down to the minis- 
try of John the Baptist — must come together at last in Christ as 
their only full sense and necessaiy end. The correspondence can- 
not limit itself to a few predictions and types, put forward here 
and there in an abstract outward way ; it must enter into the uni- 
versal structure of the entire revelation. The Old Testament 
throughout must be, not onl}^ in full harmony with itself, but in 
full organic union at the same time with the central idea of the Xew 
Testament; so that everywhere, in all its oracles, histories, and in- 
stitutions, it shall be found prefiguring this, reaching toward it,, 
and laboring as it were to find in it its own true rest and glorious 
consummation. 

The main weight of the argument for the supernatural, in Dr. 
Bushnell's book, is made to rest on Christ, as being the grand first 
principle of proof in this order of existence — an order which com- 
pletes itself fully at last only in the fact of the Incarnation. "The 
character and doctrine of Jesus," we are told, "are the sun that 
holds all the minor orbs of revelation to their places, and pours a 
sovereign self-evidencing light into all religious knowledge." Still, 
before coming to this, the first part of the work is very properly 
occupied with the subject under a more general view; the purpose 
being to show that the supernatural itself is not something abso- 
lutely foreign and strange to the constitution of the world in its 
natural form, but an order rather which is anticipated and called 
for by this, and that comes out at last, therefore, in full harmony 
with its deepest wants, in full explication, we may say, of its in- 
most meaning and sense. 

Here we find a great deal, of course, that is entitled to our ad- 
miring interest and attention, as going to establish, in the way of 
analogical and presumptive reasoning, both the possibility and the 
necessity of the supernatural, considered as being the proper com- 
plement or filling out of the natural — both joining to constitute 
what the book denominates "the one system of God." The argu- 
ment, however, as conducted by Dr. Bushnell, is made to involve 
and assert some things which it seems to us not easy to allow. 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 539 

In the first place, we demur to his line of distinction between 
the natural and the supernatural. Nature he defines to be the 
simply physical order of the world, made up of causes and effects 
flowing in constant succession, by a necessity that comes from 
within the scheme itself; in which view, we are told, "that is super- 
natural, whatever it be, that is either not in the chain of natural 
cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect in 
nature, from without the chain." In this way, the supernatural is 
brought to assume at once a most familiar every day character, by 
entering into the very conception of our own personality; for this, 
as involving intelligence and will, is not under the law of cause 
and effect in the manner of the simply physical world, but carries 
in itself the power of acting on the course of this law from with- 
out, in a free self-determining way, so as to produce results, that 
nature of itself, as here defined, could not bring to pass. 

Now it is perfectly fair to make use of this relation of mind to 
matter in the world, as an analogical argument for the possibility 
of an intervention, that shall be found descending into the world 
miraculousty from a higher sphere. But it is pushing the matter 
too far, we think, to make the first relation of one order, and paral- 
lel in full, with the second. That is not the common view of the 
case certainly; and the interest of the supernatural is likely to lose 
by it in the end, it strikes us, much more than it may seem at first 
sight to gain. As distinguished from the supernatural, in the old 
theological sense — which is at the same time here also the popular 
sense — the natural includes in its conception a great deal more than 
the simply material and physical. The term is often used indeed 
to express the idea of difference from the moral; but never so as 
to refer this last to the supernatural. When that distinction is to 
be expressed, the moral itself is made to fall at once, along with 
the physical, into the economy of nature. This includes in its con- 
stitution mind as well as matter, self-determining forces or powers 
as well as simply passive chains of cause and effect. 

Man belongs primarily to the present world ; he is incorporated 
into it organically from his birth ; his relations to it are part of its 
proper sj^stem, quite as much as the conditions and laws of things 
below him. True, he possesses in himself, at the same time, the 
capacity of a higher life, original and constitutional relations to an 
order of existence far more glorious than the present world, the 
powers of which must be brought to bear upon him in a most real 
way, if he is to fulfil at last the great purpose of his creation. But 
this does not of itself lift him out of the order of nature. It shows 



540 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

011I3- how truly he is in it, as needing thus the power of the super- 
natural, under an objective form, to perfect his existence in that 
higher view. 

We are by no means satisfied, in the next place, with Dr. Bush- 
n ell's theoiy of the origin of evil. Sin, if we understand him 
rightly, is not onl} 7 a bad possibility in an} T such world as ours, but 
a tremendous necessit}\ He holds indeed that our first parents 
were created in a state of "constituent perfection," having an in- 
ward fitness and disposition for good, that served to carry them 
toward it spontaneously without or before deliberation. But holi- 
ness in such form can have no sufficient strength or security. 
"Deliberation, when it comes, as come it must, will be the inevi- 
table fall of it ; and then when the side of counsel in them is suffi- 
ciently instructed bj that fall and the bitter sorrow it 3'ields, and 
the holy freedom is restored, it may be or become an eternally en- 
during principle. Spontaneity in good, without counsel, is weak; 
counsel and deliberative choice, without spontaneity, are only a 
character begun; issued in spontaneity, the} T are the solid reality 
of everlasting good." It does not help the case materially, to say 
that there was no positive ground or cause for sin in man's nature ; 
and that our first parents fell bj^ their own free choice. The diffi- 
culty is, that their free choice is supposed here to be so circum- 
stanced, in the way of "privative conditions," as to be absolutely 
shut up to this conclusion and no other. "The certainty of their 
sin," we are told, "is originally involved in their spiritual training 
as powers." Their condition privative was such as to involve 
"their certain lapse into evil." 

Sin is made to be thus a necessaiy transitional stage, in the pro- 
cess of full moral development. The condition of man in Paradise 
was not, and could not be, a direct onward movement in its own 
form to confirmed holiness, and so to glory, honor, and eternal life. 
It was necessaiy that he should taste evil, in order to become after- 
wards intelligently and resolute^ good. His innocence could be 
•strengthened into its full ripe virtue, only 03^ being required to de- 
scend into the rough arena of the world through the fall, for the 
purpose of needful discipline and probation. This is not a new 
thought b3 T any means. We recognize in it the familiar face of a 
speculation, which in one form or another has made itself alto- 
gether common in much of the thinking of modern Gerrnairy. But 
we do not consider it for this reason any the less wrong. It agrees 
not with the old doctrine of the Church on the subject; and the 
natural sense of the Bible is against it. It turns the Garden of 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 541 

Eden into a mere allegory or myth. It seats the necessity of sin in 
the very constitution of the world itself; a view, which goes at 
once to overthrow its character as sin, making it indeed the fruit 
of man's freedom in form, but so conditioning this freedom, that it 
is found to be only another name at last for what is in fact inevi- 
table fate. 

Dr. Bushnell carries his view of the certainty of man's fall so far, 
as to hold that the entire natural constitution of the world was 
ordered and established by God from the beginning with reference 
to that terrible fact; which in such view, therefore, could be no 
doubtful or uncertain contingency in any sense, but must be con- 
sidered rather as forming from the very start the fixed central pivot 
and hinge, we may say, on which the whole plan of the world was 
made to turn. Sin thus has its disordering consequences in the 
natural creation, not simply as they are found coming after it in 
time; but also, on a much broader scale it would seem, as thejr have 
been made in God's plan to go before it, in the form of dispositions 
and arrangements contrived prospectively to anticipate its advent, 
and to lead over to it finally as the full interpretation of their own 
sense. 

Even the long geologic ages, stretching away back of the Adamic 
creation, are taken to be prelusive throughout in this way of the 
surely coming fact of sin. " This whole tossing, rending, recom- 
posing process, that we call geology," our author tells us, "symbol- 
izes evidently, as in highest reason it should, the grand spiritual 
catastrophe and the Christian new creation of man; which, both to- 
gether, comprehend the problem of mind, and so the final causes or 
last ends of all God's works. What we see, is the beginning con- 
versing with the end, and Eternal Forethought reaching across the 
tottering mountains and boiling seas, to unite beginning and end 
together. So that we may hear the grinding layers of the rocks 
singing harshty : 

Of man's first disobedience and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree — 

and all the long eras of desolation, and refitted bloom and beauty, 
represented in the registers of the world, are but the epic in stone 
of man's great history, before the time." 

On all this, we venture here no particular criticism. The subject, 
in the hands of Dr. Bushnell, is full of imagination and poetry, 
while it is made to overflow at the same time with rich suggestive 
thought. Our great embarrassment with it is, that, by making the 
universal order of the world dependent centrally upon the fall of 



542 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

man, and the introduction of sin, it makes this no less necessarj^ 
than the geologic cataclysms, that owe their existence to it antici- 
patively so many ages before. Calvin's supralapsarianism,and the 
pantheistic world-progress of Hegel, seem to us alwaj^s to run out 
here to the same conclusion, a Manichean notion of sin on the one 
hand, and as the necessary counterpart of this, a Gnostic concep- 
tion of redemption on the other. 

Through whatever stages of imperfection and disorder our world 
ma}' have passed previously to the Mosaic creation described in the 
first chapter of Genesis, we know that it was then at least pro- 
nounced by God himself to be in all respects "very good." There 
can be no doubt, too, that this goodness, in the view of the sacred 
narrative, was held to consist in its full correspondence with the 
nature of man as he stood before the fall. The world was good, 
not in the light of a penitentiary prepared beforehand to suit the cir- 
cumstances of his case in a state of sin, but as a fit theatre for the 
free harmonious development of his life in a state of innocence. 
How the fall wrought to disturb this original order, is of course a 
great mystery. It may have been largely by changes and priva- 
tions induced upon the nature of man himself, causing the world to 
be in its relations to him something wholly different from what it 
would be, if he were not thus hurled down from his first estate, and 
making it impossible for him even to conceive now of what might 
be comprehended for him in any such normal order. One thing is 
certain ; had he continued sinless, the law of death, as it prevails in 
nature, could not have extended itself to his person ; and how much 
of superiorit}- this might have involved, in other respects, to the 
constitutional vanity and misery of the world as we now find it, no 
one ma}^ pretend surety to say. 

Dr. Bushnell's idea of the necessity of sin extends logically to all 
worlds. Even the good angels, spoken of in the Scriptures, he 
tells us, "for aught that appears, have all been passed through and 
brought up out of a fall, as the redeemed of mankind will be." The 
celebrated Christian philosopher, Richard Rothe — one of the pro- 
foundest thinkers of the age — adopts the same thought, we remem- 
ber, in his Theological Ethics. We let it pass here without further 
remark. 

We have been somewhat surprised to find Dr. Bushnell denying 
also the proper personality of Satan. He allows the existence of 
evil spirits ; but is not willing to admit the idea of their organiza- 
tion under any single head. Satan, he tells us, is a collective term 
simply, designating "the all or total of bad minds and powers." 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 543 

This is neither biblical, we think, nor ecclesiastical — though it be 
supported, curiously enough, by the authority of Davenport, "the 
ablest theologian of all the New England Fathers." It detracts 
also seriously, in our opinion, from the objective realness, and full 
historical significance, of the work of redemption, regarded as an 
actual supernatural conflict between the powers of light and the 
powers of darkness. 

A real personal Satan seems necessary to bring out in full relief 
the idea of a real personal Christ. And so far as the danger of 
any Manichean dualism is concerned, we do not see that we are 
brought so nigh to it by any means in this way, as by the hypoth- 
esis of our respected author himself; which, as we have seen, makes 
sin to be a necessary thing — a fact sure to come to pass — in the 
very constitution of the world itself? It carries indeed to our ear, 
we must confess, a very Zoroastrish sound, when we are told up 
and down, that evil is "a bad possibility that environs God from 
eternity, waiting to become a fact, and certain to become a fact, 
whenever the opportunity is given;" so that, u the moment God 
creates a realm of powers, the bad possibility as certainly becomes 
a bad actuality — an outbreaking evil, or empire of evil, in created 
spirits, according to their order." 

We have said that the great merit of Dr. Bushnell's book, as a 
plea for the supernatural, is its Christological character. Its argu- 
ment centres in Jesus Christ ; whose whole personality, as we have 
it portrayed in the Gospel, is shown with great beauty and force to 
be an altogether superhuman fact, and such a self-evidencing mira- 
cle in its own nature, as may well be considered sufficient to flood 
with the light of heavenly demonstration the universal kosmos of 
the new creation. And yet we do not feel after all, that enough is 
made still of the significance in this view of the great " mystery of 
godliness," as related to the supernatural on the one side and to 
the world of nature on the other. 

The revelation of the supernatural in and by Christ is not of one 
kind with the revelation of it in an}^ other way. Nature in its own 
order needs the supernatural, reaches after it, and through the hu- 
man spirit aspires toward it continually as the necessary outlet and 
complement of its last wants. This aspiration, however, is in it- 
self something negative merely, which as such can have no power 
of course ever to grasp the supernatural or to bring it down to its 
own sphere ; for what nature might so fetch into itself b}^ powers 
of its own would be no longer swper-natural ; the negative want or 
nisus here must be met by a positive self-representation of its ob- 



544 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ject from the other side. In these circumstances there is room for 
imaginary or false relations to thrust themselves in as substitutes 
for the true. Men may invest their own speculative fancies and 
dreams — the shadowy projections of their spiritual nature itself 
reaching forth toward the dark void — with a sort of spurious ob- 
jectivity; thus creating for themselves whole worlds of religion, 
that shall be found to mimic and caricature the truth in its proper 
form. 

Again, the powers of the invisible world imvv plaj^ into the 
economy of nature in an irregular, abnormal way, through Satanic 
inlets, offering themselves to the inward craving of the human 
spirit, as the very presence and sense of the supernatural which it 
needs for its perfection, and so hurrying it away, by the force of 
its religious instincts themselves, into a still more gloomy region 
of horrible unrealities and lies. To this sphere belongs the sorcery, 
magic, and witchcraft of all ages, as well as the oracles and wonders 
of the heathen world generally, as far as it may be necessary to 
admit their more than natural character; and we have no hesita- 
tion, in referring — as Dr. Bushnell likewise does — to the so-called 
" spiritual manifestations " of our own day, on the supposition 
of their being what they pretend to be and not mere tricks of 
jugglery; a question which it is not necessary here to discuss. The 
world, however, God be praised, has not been left hopelessly to the 
dominion of these phantoms and lies, growing out of such false 
relations to the supernatural. The truth has descended into it, 
under its own proper form. This is the idea of Revelation. 

In one view, nature itself is a divine revelation. A supernatural 
presence underlies it, and works through it, at every point. But 
still as man now is, he has no power to come by this to any right 
knowledge of God, and much less to any firm and steady apprehen- 
sion of a higher order of life in His presence. Hence an actual 
coming down of God into the world, under a wholly new form, be- 
comes the proper full sense of the supernatural as required now to 
meet our wants. Revelation, so understood, is a single fact ; an- 
nouncing its own advent by heavenly oracles and signs, making 
room for itself more and more by preliminary heaven-appointed 
dispensations, from the time of Adam down to the time of John 
the Baptist ; but bursting forth at last, in its whole reality and 
gloiy, only in the ever-adorable mystery of the Incarnation. 

The supernatural in Christ thus is not in one line simply with 
the supernatural exhibited in previous divine revelations, a fact 
ranking high and conclusive among other facts of like superhuman 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 545 

order ; it is the organic root rather of all true revelation from the 
beginning of the world ; the one absolute truth in this form, which, 
coming in the fulness of time, makes good finally the sense of all 
previous oracles and outshinings from behind the veil, disclosing 
the real ground of them in its own presence. And being so related 
to what went before in the way of prophetical word and type, with 
still more certainty must the mystery be organically joined with 
all that comes after it, in the progressive unfolding of the Christian 
salvation. The Incarnation constitutes the Gospel — being in its 
very nature a new revelation of God in the world, by which the 
life of heaven is made to unite itself with the life of earth, in a real 
abiding way, so as to bring the supernatural home to men in a form 
fully answerable to their inmost wants. In such view, it is the be- 
ginning of a new order of existence, the principle of a new crea- 
tion, which in the nature of the case must hold under an objective, 
historical character, as something different from the world in its 
simply natural constitution, on to the end of time. This is the old 
Patristic idea of the Holy Catholic Church ; and it is not difficult 
surely to see how, in the light of the subject as thus explained, so 
much account should have been made of it from the first, as being 
absolutely necessary for the full carrying out of the Christian mys- 
tery to its proper end. 

We have the feeling, as we have said, that Dr. Bushnell's sj^stem 
of the supernatural, with all its Christological merit, fails some- 
how after all to lay hold of the full significance of the Incarnation, 
in the broad organic view now mentioned. In such way, we mean, 
as to make this, not merely the greatest of all arguments for the 
supernatural in a general view, but the absolute whole revelation 
of it, in the only form in which it can ever be truly and steadily 
objective to faith, and practically efficient for the purposes of re- 
demption ; so that all relations to it, all communications with it, on 
the outside of this great Mystery of Godliness, can never be any- 
thing better than relative only, dream-like, apparitional, or it may 
be absolutely magical, demoniacal, and false. For Rationalism, it 
should ever be borne in mind, has two sides, two opposite poles of 
unbelief, that are forever playing into each other with wonderful 
readiness and ease; an abstract naturalism on the one hand, that 
owns no reality higher than the pi\ sent world ; and then an ab- 
stract spiritualism on the other hand, by which the sense of the 
supernatural is not allowed to come to any real union with the 
sense of the natural in the way of faith, but is made to float over 
it fantastically in the way of mere Gnostic imagination. The one 



546 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

absolute Truth, according to St. John, as against both these anti- 
christ ian extremes, is the real coming of Christ in the flesh (1 John 
4 : 1—3) ; in making earnest with which under such view, it is not 
easy to see how faith should not feel itself coustraiued to make like 
earnest also with the old doctrine of the Church. 

This doctrine, we are sorry to say, struggles in vain throughout 
Dr. Bushnell's book to come to its proper clear and full expression; 
and the want of it, in our view, is a serious defect in his otherwise 
admirable Christological argument. He shows indeed, at various 
points, the power of churchly ideas — for all profound thinking on 
the historical significance of Christ's person must run more or less 
that way ; he is ready enough too, of course, to acknowledge the 
existence of the Church in the general Xew England sense; but 
the conception of the Church, as it is made to be an article of faith, 
a first principle or ground element of Christianity, in the Apostles' 
Creed, and in all the ancient Creeds, has seemingly no place in his 
system whatever. 

Thus the Gospel seems to be regarded by him too commonly, in 
the light of a constitution or fact qualifying the natural condition 
of the world generally in a supernatural way. and setting it in new 
relations to God within its old order of life ; in virtue of which, it 
may be supposed capable then of coming at once, on its own level, 
within the range and scope of the powers of redemption, flowing 
around it spiritually at all times like the air of heaven. Whereas 
the mystery of the new creation in Christ would appear plainly to 
require, that we should conceive of it, not as any such system of 
heavenly possibilities addec 1 to the world in its general natural 
character, but as an objective constitution rather, having place in 
the world under a wholly different form, and carrying in itself rela- 
tions and powers altogether peculiar, and not to be found anywhere 
beyond its own limits ; an order of supernatural grace, into which 
men must be introduced first of all. (the old ecclesiastical idea of 
re-birth through the sacrament of baptism) by an outward ' ; obe- 
dience of faith," in order that they may come into the full u«e af- 
terwards of its quickening and saving help. Any such view must 
necessarily exclude Dr. Bushneirs suggestion, that a regenerate life 
may be capable of passing, like the corruption of the race, by 
natural propagation, "under the well known laws of plrysiolog}'," 
from parents to children ; as it demands also a material qualifica- 
tion of a good deal that he says besides, on the subject of Chris- 
tian experience, the work of the Spirit, and the new creation in 
Christ Jesus. 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 547 

It is owing to this want of ecclesiastical feeling, no doubt, that 
Dr. Bushnell falls in so readily with the stereotyped Puritanic way 
of thinking in regard to the historical Church of past ages, by 
which it is made to be from the beginning, a systematic falling 
away from the proper sense of the Gospel, in all its points of dif- 
ference from the prevalent spiritualism of modern times. In one 
of his chapters, we have an argument to show, that "the world is 
governed supernaturally in the interest of Christianity ; " which, 
carried out in any sort of consistency with itself, would seem to 
involve necessarily a powerful presumption in favor of the old 
Catholic Church — .the only form, in which, by general acknowledg- 
ment now, the truth of Christianity was maintained, through long 
ages, against all manner of infidelities and heresies seeking its de- 
struction. 

But our author's theory will not allow the argument in any such 
way as that — he contrives to find here a wheel within a wheel, an 
esoteric under-sense, by which the outward complexion and first 
impression of God's providence are made to be one thing, and its 
hidden ulterior meaning another thing altogether. We are gravely 
told, accordingly, that Christianity must "go into a grand process 
of corruption at first," to make room for its own regeneration 
finally to a higher and better life. And so if the course of events, 
century after century, fall in concurrently with the march of Chris- 
tianity in this false shape, verifying apparently in the fortunes of 
the Catholic Church the symbol of the bush that burned with fire 
and yet was not consumed, we are not to be moved by it at all as 
proving anything in favor of the Church, but to read in it on the 
contrary only a profound ordering of God's providence, designed 
to open the way for its ultimate confusion and defeat. Need we 
say that the providential, or historical argument for Christianit} r , 
in any such form as this, is shorn of all force, and turned into a 
mere arbitrary conceit, which is capable of being used ingeniously 
with as much effect one way as another ? 

We have been pleased to find, that Dr. Bushnell does not shrink 
from confessing the continuation of the power of miracles in the 
Church, making them to be on fit occasions both possible and ac- 
tual, from the first century down to the present time. We have 
long felt, that the popular notion on the subject, which supposes 
them to have continued for about three centuries after Christ, and 
then to have ceased entirely, is both against reason and without 
anj 7 sort of proper support in history. The proof for miracles after 
the third century is altogether more full and clear, than the proof 



548 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

for miracles in the second and third centuries themselves. The real 
possibility of them, moreover, would seem to lie in the very con- 
ception of Christianity, considered as an order of supernatural 
powers enduringly present in the world to the end of time ; so that 
one is at a loss to understand, what kind of faith in it they can 
have, who make a merit of mocking and scouting every miraculous 
pretension in its name, as being at once, and of itself, the surest 
evidence of gross imposture or blind superstition. With such irra- 
tional and irreligious skepticism our Hartford divine has no sym- 
pathy. He believes in the continuation of the power of miracles in 
the Church, down even to our own clay; aucl more than that, he 
brings forward quite a number of what he considers well authenti- 
cated examples of the miraculous in modern times, which have 
fallen in some measure under his own observation. It is curious 
to read his chapter on this subject. 

Here again, however, we are struck with the unchurchly spirit of 
his thinking. The old ecclesiastical miracles are not wholly to his 
taste; their ecclesiasticism at least seems to be counted a hindrance 
to their credibility, more than a help. His faith in such things ap- 
pears to breathe most free, when it passes out of that order, and is 
allowed to expatiate at large among wonders more or less extra-ec- 
clesiastical in their form and character. We shall not pretend, of 
course, to enter here into any examination of his cases. We must 
say, however, that Church miracles in the proper sense- — miracles, 
we mean, as mediated bj the idea of the Church in the old Augus- 
tinian view — are vastly more respectable, in our eyes, than any 
such class of examples under a different and more general type. 
We question, indeed, if it be possible to make earnest with the be- 
lief of miracles at all, except in connection with some believing ap- 
prehension of the mystery of the Church, in the sense of the Apos- 
tles' Creed. Out of that order, the supernatural as related to the 
present world, would seem to cany with it always, even under its 
best and most reliable manifestations, a certain character of Gnos- 
tic unreality, making it to be no proper object for stead} T Christian 
faith. 

Verily, it is a great thing to have faith, even as a grain of mustard 
seed; to be able to own and embrace, not merely the thought of the 
supernatural in a natural way, but the real presence of it in its own 
order; to hold the proper verity of the Gospel, not in the form of 
doctrine only, or supposed inward experiences, but in the form of 
full objective, historical fact. To be able to say the Creed, in its 
own meaning and sense ; to stand before the Man Jesus, and con- 



Chap. XLII] the natural and supernatural 549 

fess, with more than natural knowledge, as Peter did: " Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God ; " to believe that " Christ is 
come in the flesh," with all the necessary antecedents, concomitants, 
and consequents of such a revelation — His birth of the Virgin, full 
of grace, and blessed among women ; His miracles in the days of his 
flesh; His resurrection and ascension; His new presence in the 
world by the Spirit ; the supernatural order of the Church, set over 
against the order of nature, and comprehending in itself the powers 
of His resurrection life to the end of time — this, we say, is the Gospel, 
as we find it preached everywhere in the Acts of the Apostles — as it 
underlies all the New Testament Epistles — as it animated the spirit 
of martyrs and confessors in the first Christian ages; and the power 
of believing it, we repeat, is indeed so great a thing, that all worldly 
advantages, in comparison, may well seem to be both poor and 
mean. 

Such faith, from the verj T nature of the case, must be itself super- 
natural — the power of passing beyond nature, so as to lay hold of 
things heavenly and divine in their own higher order and sphere. 
It must come into the soul then in and through the constitution of 
grace itself, under its character of objective distinction from the 
constitution of man's merely natural life. There may be actings of 
the organ or faculty, indeed, on the outside of this; but these will 
be always in a more or less Gnostic and unreal way; forms of be- 
lieving, we may say, filled as yet with no proper contents of the faith 
or virtue that comes to its full exercise in the bosom of the Christian 
mystery alone. And what now, if the standing form of this mys- 
tery in the world be still the Church, as it was held to be in the 
beginning? Could faith do its office, in that case, while denying, 
despising, ignoring, or overlooking its claims? 

One use of his argument for the supernatural Dr. Bushnell finds 
in this, that it provides a place and a plea for the "positive institu- 
tions of religion," as he calls them — meaning by these, church or- 
ganization, the sacraments, the Sabbath, the Bible, the office of the 
ministry, &c. — which are allowed to be "falling rapidly into disre- 
spect, as if destined finally to be quite lost or sunk in oblivion." 
This fact itself he ascribes to the growth and pervading influence 
of naturalism. Bat may we not reverse the order, and make the 
loss of belief — we will not say in the positive institutions of Chris- 
tianity — but in the Christian Church itself, one large cause of the 
reigning decay of faith in a wider view? To restore the superna- 
tural to its general rights, then, nothing would be needed so much, 
first of all, as a resuscitation of faith in the Church. Then, also, 



550 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

any argument for the supernatural, any plea for the Christological 
in its sound and right form, to be of full force and eifect in the end, 
must be at the same time ecclesiastical also; or, in other words, an 
argument for the old doctrine of the Church, as it stands enshrined 
in the early Creeds. Is it too much to hope, that Dr. Bushnell's 
earnest and active mind may yet be turned to the subject, under 
this profoundly interesting view? 



CHAPTER XLIII 

A FTER Dr. Nevin had published his polemical articles on Early 
-C\- Christianity and Cyprian in the }^ear 1852, he, in a great 
measure, laid aside the Church Question and occupied his mind 
theoretically in the higher region of Christolog3 r , and practically 
in the promotion of the Liturgical movement. But the Church and 
the Creed, as living realities flowing from the person of Christ, 
could not be dismissed from his heart or mind and accordingly, 
whilst he was still building his house at Lancaster, from his retreat 
at Windsor Place he began to give utterance to his " Thoughts on the 
Church," which he concluded in a second article from his new home 
at Lancaster. The two articles occupied seventy-three pages of 
the Mercer sburg Bevieiv (see April and July numbers), of which 
our limits will allow us here to furnish only a portion of the more 
positive character. — They were his pia desideria in his seclusion. 

The Question of the Church is in its ground and principle One. 
To a superficial thinker this may not be at once apparent. In 
first view, there might seem to be rather a number of church ques- 
tions meeting in no common ground. At one time, the matter in 
dispute is Episcopacy; at another time, it is the power of the Sacra- 
ments; then again, it may be the use of a Liturgy, the observance 
of the Church Year, or the stress which it is proper to lay on the 
forms and ceremonies generally of religious Worship. It soon be- 
comes evident, however, on serious consideration, that all these 
points, different as they may seem, involve here in some way the 
presence of a thought or idea more general than themselves, through 
the power of which they come together at last in the form of a sin- 
gle great question. These are after all subordinate and secondary 
issues onby, the whole significance of which lies in the sense of a 
far deeper and more comprehensive issue that continually condi- 
tions them from behind. The sense of this may be indeed more an 
instinct than any clear apprehension; still it is always at hand, 
where any true interest is taken in these subordinate questions. 

Hence it is never difficult to know, how the parties on any one such 
question will form themselves, when the subject for consideration 
comes to be considered. The lines are still drawn always as between 
the same churchly and unchurchly tendencies ; and no one is at a 

(551) 



552 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

loss to anticipate in each case beforehand in what way the distinc- 
tion mast fall. This distinction, therefore, is not made by any of 
these subordinate issues, nor yet by all of them taken together; 
but it forms the rule and measure rather b}^ which they come to ex- 
ist. It is not a particular view of the sacraments that makes a man 
to be churchly or unchurchly ; but it is his sense of the Church, on 
the contrary, that gives complexion and character to the view he 
may have of the sacraments. The church feeling thus is older and 
deeper in the order of nature than the sacramental, or the liturgical, 
or any other of like partial kind and form. The partial interest 
in each case refers itself spontaneously to the general interest in 
which it is comprehended, and bears witness in doing so to the 
unity of the whole subject. There is, accordingly, on all sides, a 
sort of intuitional sense of such ultimate unity or oneness reaching 
through the various questions that are agitated in regard to the 
Church, which may be said to go much beyond what is generally 
clear for the understanding. All these questions are felt to resolve 
themselves finally into one, which is the Church Question, in the 
full and proper sense of the term. 



Some proper sense of the true character of the Church Question 
in the view now stated, some power to perceive and acknowledge 
in a fair manner its claims to respect, must be considered to be an 
indispensable preliminary condition to any right inquiry or just 
judgment concerning its merits one way or another. The want of 
such appreciation, the absence of such positive insight into the 
reality and magnitude and true religious earnestness of the problem 
to be here solved and settled, is an argument at once, wherever 
found, of full disqualification for the task of taking it in hand; and 
goes with good reason, we may add, to create a presumption of 
wrong against the cause in whose service it appears. For in the 
nature of the case, the disqualification must be moral, and not 
simply natural. 

Not to be able to see at all the solemn interest of the subject, is 
necessarily in some degree also not to be willing to see it. There 
is a measure of insincerity and affectation always, we have reason 
to believe, in any such assumed posture of indifference or contempt 
towards what all feel notwithstanding to be of the deepest meaning 
for Christianity. Children feel it; it enters as an instinctive senti- 
ment into all unsophisticated piety; the sense of it reveals itself, 
as we have already seen, even in those who pretend to make light 
of it, by the intemperate spirit with which they are sure to meet 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 553 

the subject wherever it comes in their way. There is that in their 
interior consciousness here, which gives the lie palpably to what 
they say with their lips and try to think in their hearts. Such 
being the case, we repeat, they are not qualified to sit in judgment 
on what they undertake thus magisterially to condemn. They lack 
the conditions of the hearing ear and the seeing eye. We have a 
right to distrust their cause, for the very reason that it allows, and 
seems to favor, a spiritual posture which we may easily know to be 
so dishonest and false. 



Paganism, in its first conflict with Christianity, affected in this 
way an entire superiority to the whole question which this last of- 
fered for its consideration. It could not condescend to meet it in 
any earnest and serious style. The story of the Gospel was treated 
as a Jewish dream, too foolish and absurd to deserve the least re- 
spectful attention ; and the religion of those who embraced it was 
held to be a fair occasion for unbounded mockery and scorn, as be- 
ing fit only for such as had taken leave of their senses. So Pagan- 
ism talked ; and so, no doubt, Paganism tried also to believe, per- 
suading itself that its view of things was the fruit of actual knowl- 
edge and conviction. But it is easy to see now that this was not 
the case ; and that for a thoughtful mind even then there might 
have been found a strong presumption for the Christian cause in 
the very posture and spirit of the unbelieving power by which it 
was thus superciliously opposed. For Paganism had no power to 
sustain itself quietly and steadily in this affectation of contempt 
towards Christianity ; as it might surely have been able to do, if , 
the new religion had been in fact so worthy of being laughed at as 
it pretended to think. There was that in its own consciousness, 
which after all gave the lie to its professed indifference, and com- 
pelled it in spite of itself to feel that it was at issue in this case 
with a force which threatened nothing less than its own destruc- 
tion. 

However particular points of the Christian controversy might 
seem to offer easy and fair opportunity for caricature and over- 
whelming explosion, for biting wit or triumphant sneer, there was 
still an evident feeling all the time that the subject did not end in 
any such points, that all these particular questions resolved them- 
selves mysteriously into the presence of a deeper general question 
lying behind, and that this had to do in truth with the universal 
life of the world as it then stood. Paganism knew in this blind 
way at least, in the midst of all its levity, that Christianity was a 
35 



554 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

great power, an earnest power, a power that had a right to challenge 
its solemn apprehension and dread. It was the sense of this pre- 
cisely, which made it impossible for it to treat Christianity in the 
way it could treat other religions. The} T might be tolerated, even 
where the^y were despised. But for Christianity there could be no 
toleration. Over against its claims, there was no room for equa- 
nimity or patience. 

Hence the strange spectacle of that which was ridiculed as the 
most unmeaning of all religions, being the most ready object never- 
theless of wrath and persecution on the part of those who made 
themselves superior to it in such st3 T le. Xo one can consider such 
a relation, without perceiving at once that it implied weakness and 
wrong on the side of Paganism, and a lack of power to cope fairly 
with the strength of the interest it sought to crush. Its want of 
ability to meet the claims of Christian^ in an earnest and serious 
manner, its superficial levit}^ in a case whose profound interest at 
the same time it was compelled to confess in the secret depths of 
its own mind, made it certain in the circumstances that it could do 
no justice to the Christian argument, and that an}" judgment it 
might pronounce upon it was far more likely to be wrong than 
right. 

And so in any case, where a deep moral interest is involved, 
where a question of momentous practical bearings is to be settled, 
there must be some proper sense of the true earnestness of the 
subject, some sympathy with it, and some power to perceive and 
appreciate its claims to respect, before there can be an}" fitness or 
right to sit in judgment upon it; and no verdict or conclusion 
reached in regard to it, without such previous qualification, can ever 
deserve to be held of any account. 



The presumption against all such easy and wholesale judgment 
becomes still stronger, when it is considered that the views, which 
are thus summarily charged with madness and folly, have exercised 
in fact the widest and most powerful influence in the Christian 
world through all ages. One would suppose it might serve to tame 
somewhat the confident tone of those who allow themselves to 
think and talk in this way, only to know that by far the largest 
part of Christendom at the present time is ruled, both practically 
and theoretically, by the authority of just that system of ideas in 
regard to the Church, which they are accustomed to revile and de- 
ride as resting on no ground of reason whatever. But the case be- 
comes a great deal stronger, when it is remembered that the same 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 555 

system of thought has in fact prevailed, with overwhelming author- 
ity, in every age of the Church from the beginning. There is no 
mistake with regard to this point. It is just as plain as it is pos- 
sible for it to be made by the evidence of history. We read the 
full proof of it in all the movements of Christian antiquity. 

Right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable, the very idea of the 
Church, which is now denounced in the quarter of which we are 
speaking as no better than a silly dream, is that precisely which is 
found to pervade the reigning mind of the Church catholic from 
the century of the Apostles down to the century of the Reforma- 
tion. It meets us in the old Creeds ; it speaks to us from every 
page of the Christian Fathers ; it breathes through all the ancient 
Liturgies ; it enters into the universal scheme of the early Chris- 
tian Faith. The very points in it which strike the party in ques- 
tion as most grossly obnoxious to vilification and reproach, were 
admitted and proclaimed without the least feeling of reserve. 
Points, for example, that such a man as Mr. Spurgeon,the popular 
juvenile preacher of London, can find no terms too strong to stig- 
matize as the perfection of brainless puerility, had power notwith- 
standing to command the reverence of entire ecumenical synods, 
and were received everywhere with unquestioning faith by the 
wisest and best men. What is with him a subject only for heart- 
felt mockery, was a solemn heavenly mystery to the mind of an 
Augustine or a Chrysostom. He finds it easy to wade, where an 
Origen or a Jerome found ample room to swim. 



It requires indeed only some proper communion with the subject 
in our own spirits, to perceive the truth of the general thought 
which we have now in hand. It is wonderful with what power 
church ideas make their appeal to the soul, when it is brought into 
the right posture and habit for perceiving their force. And this 
habit is anything but such as it might be supposed to be, on the 
theory of those who seek to resolve all sentiments of the sort into 
worldly and unspiritual motives. It does not come of logic. It is 
no fruit of the mere understanding. It owns no sympathy with 
the noise and rush of material interests, the common outward life 
of the present world. It is a habit rather, in which the mind is 
brought to fall back upon the depths of its own nature, and to con_ 
verse with the spiritual things, not so much in the way of outward 
reflection, as in the wa}^ of inward intuition. 

In some such style it is, that the unperverted thoughts of child- 
hood are accustomed to go out towards the realities of the world 



556 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

unseen and eternal ; and children, as we have had occasion to sa}~ 
before, have a natural receptivity for all churchly ideas; a truth 
which any one can easily verify, by remembering the experience of 
his own childhood, or by observing the childhood of others. What 
true child ever had any difficulty in admitting the idea of baptismal 
grace, or in acknowledging the mystical force of the Lord's Sup- 
per? So at ever}' point children are peculiarly open to just those 
views and sentiments in religion, which enter into what rua}- be 
termed the objective churchly side of Christianity, as we have it 
developed in the Old Catholic Church. The onl}' true order of 
faith for them is alwa}-s the Apostles' Creed. No symbol, no cate- 
chism, ever speaks to them like that. They are disposed to believe 
in saints, and to hold in reverence the memory of confessors and 
martyrs. The}' have an active sense for the liturgical in relig- 
ion, for the mystical, for the priestly and sacramental. It costs no 
trouble to bend their first religious thoughts this way. Their 
earliest piety will not flow smoothly in any other channel. 

And thus it is through life, where the child is allowed to remain 
still " father to the man," in any right sense, and where opportunit}' 
is still found for the religious sensibilities to work in their proper 
primitive form. The "testimou}- of the soul," on which Tertullian 
lays so much stress, as being on the side of all religion, and as 
bearing witness in particular to the claims of Christianity the ab- 
solutely true religion, goes unquestionably in favor also of Chris- 
tianity under the churchly view, and lends countenance to the whole 
circle of thoughts and feelings, in which this view may be said to 
have its natural and proper home. There is that in the inmost 
depths of our religious being, which echoes responsively to the 
voice of this special form of the Christian faith, wherever there is 
room for it to be rightly and fairly heard. Is it not here, in truth, 
we reach the ground and foundation of all religious art? All such 
art is churchly by its veiy constitution, and ceases to be intelligible 
where some sense of the Church comes not in as a key to explain 
its meaning. Puritanic ideas are for the understanding; Catholic 
ideas speak more directly to the heart. 



The true sense of the Church Question, in this view, that which 
forms its proper nerve and gist, is not found really in those points 
around which the controversy is most commonly made to revolve. 
The first matter needing to be settled is not the right of any out- 
ward historical organization to be considered the Church or a part 
of the Church, but what the Church itself must be held to be in 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 557 

theory or idea ; not the force and value of any institution or usage 
or order which may be set forward in any quarter as evidencing 
the presence of the Church, but what this presence in any case must 
be taken actually to involve and mean. If men have no common 
notion or conception of the Church, some taking it to mean much 
and others taking it to mean very little or almost nothing at all, it 
can never be more than a waste of time for them to dispute concern- 
ing the modes of its being or the proper methods of its action. 

Only when the idea of the Church has been first brought to some 
clear determination, can the way be said to be at all open for dis- 
cussing either intelligibly or profitably such questions as relate 
onhy to the manner in which the idea should be, or actually may be 
anywhere, carried out in practice. That is always a most heartless 
sort of controversy about Church points, where the parties at issue 
agree at bottom in disowning, or not perceiving what forms in fact 
the true core of the subject in debate, and thus show themselves to 
be contending for an empty form and nothing more; as when the 
Baptist insists on the obligation of the sacraments against the 
Quaker, or the Congregationalist defends the baptism of infants 
against the Baptist, without any faith on either side in the old 
doctrine of sacramental grace; or as when the Episcopalian is 
violent for bishops, or for the use of a liturgy, against the Presby- 
terian, while for both alike all resolves itself into a question of 
mere outward appointment, and neither the Christian ministry nor 
Christian worship mean a particle more for the one than they mean 
for the other. 

Such questions, belonging to the periphery of the Church system, 
are of course important; but only as they are viewed in connection 
with the centre of the sphere in which they have their place. Dis- 
joined from this in thought, the}^ cease to have any meaning or 
force. What earnest mind can make much account of the question 
of infant baptism, if the whole sacrament be considered an outward 
sign merely without any sort of objective force? To what can the 
question of Episcopacy amount for an3^ such mind, where the minis- 
try is not held to be of strictly divine right, and the necessary chan- 
nel of God's grace in the Church? It may be something relatively 
churchly to uphold the authority of the sacraments in opposition 
to the Quakers, to be in favor of infant baptism in contradiction to 
the Baptists, to go for Presbyterianism instead of Independency 
and Congregationalism, to press the distinguishing points of Angli- 
can or American Episcopacy against all other denominations; but 
no such distinctions are sufficient of themselves to bring into view 



558 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

the absolute sense of the quality which is applied to them b}^ the 
term churchy. To reach this, we must go farther back. The 
fundamental question is not of the sacraments, nor of a liturgy, nor 
of the Church Year, nor of ordination and apostolical succession, 
nor of presb3'ters, bishops, or popes; but, as we have said, of the 
nature of the Church itself, considered in its ideal character, and as 
an object of thought anterior to every such revelation of its pres- 
ence in an outward way. 



What is the Church? What is the true idea or conception of it, 
in the econonrv of the Christian salvation? Does it belong to the 
essence of Christianity; or is it something accidental only to its 
proper being, a constitution made to inclose it in an outward way. 
and capable of being separated from it without serious damage to 
its life? 

This, we say, is the true Church Question, the root of that great 
controversy concerning the Church, whose ramifications reach so 
far, and whose multitudinous bearings are found to cover at last 
the entire field both of Christian doctrine and Christian practice. 
Here is the fountain head of the difference, which like some mighty 
stream divides throughout the churchfy s} T stem of religion from 
the unchurchfy. Here is the beginning of the great gulf fixed be- 
tween them, which serves to place them as it were in two opposite 
worlds. No other issue, within the Christian sphere itself, de- 
scends so deep or reaches so far. It enters into the very idea of 
faith, affects the sense of all worship, conditions the universal 
scheme of theolog3 T , and moulds and shapes the religious life at 
every point. It gives rise to two phases of Christianity, which are 
so different as to seem at last indeed, in their full development, 
more like two Christianities than one. 



If there could be any doubt concerning the proper sense of the 
Creed here separately considered, it must disappear immediately 
in view of what may easily be known in other waj T s to have been 
the general faith of the early Church on this subject. As all the 
variations of the Creed proceed in one and the same strain, so also 
is this found to be in full harmon}- at the same time with the uni- 
versal religious thinking of the time to which they belong. No 
one who has taken the least serious pains to qualify himself for an 
intelligent opinion in the case, can make any question in regard to 
this point. The idea of the Church which meets us in the Epistles 
of Ignatius, is the same that rules the polemics of Irenaeus, ani- 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 559 

mates the zeal of Cyprian, and comes to its full systematic devel- 
opment at last in the theology of the great Augustine. It is the 
idea, by which all institutions and arrangements, all offices and sac- 
raments, all forms and rubrics, belonging to the Church, are made 
to be something subordinate to the living constitution of the 
Church itself, in virtue of which only they can be supposed to 
carr}^ with them either grace or power. 

Faith in the Church, with these Fathers, was not just faith in 
bishops, or in an altar, or in the use of a liturgy; for bishops, and 
altars, and liturgies, were common among such as were held not- 
withstanding to have neither part nor lot in the true common- 
wealth of Christ. It terminated on what the Church was supposed 
to be as a divine mystery, back of episcopacy, and behind all sacra- 
ments, symbols, and forms, the force of which must turn neces- 
sarily at last on its own nature. The peculiarity of this old church 
faith is, that it goes right to the heart of the true Church Question, 
where many are altogether unwilling to follow it, who still affect 
to make great account of it for other points; infant baptism, for 
instance, baptismal grace, the mystical power of the Lord's Sup- 
per, or the three orders of the ministry; without perceiving that 
such points in fact mean nothing, save in union with the central 
life of the system to which they belong. The old faith went hand 
in hand with the Creed; saw in the Church the presence of a new 
order of life in the world, flowing from Christ's exaltation and the 
sending of the Holy Ghost; owned it for the body of Christ, and 
the home of the Spirit ; ascribed to it for this reason heavenly pre- 
rogatives and powers; and found no difficulty accordingly in speak- 
ing of it as the ark of salvation, in whose bosom alone men might 
hope to outride safely the perils of their present life, and to be 
borne finalty into the haven of eternal rest. 



The doctrine of the Church, we have seen, is not in the Creed in 
any merely outward and mechanical way. It appears there as a 
necessary part of the general mystery of faith, being absolutely re- 
quired, just where it comes into view, to carry forward the signifi- 
cance and power of the Christian salvation, from what goes before 
to what follows after; being nothing less in truth than the connect- 
ing link between the mission of the Holy Ghost, and the full course 
of grace subsequently in the experience of believers. In this view, 
the article could not be dropped from the system, nor transposed 
in it to any different place, without marring its organic complete- 
ness throughout; as on the other hand the article itself, so torn 



560 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

from its connections, could no longer retain its own proper mean- 
ing as an object of faith. So it is indeed with all the articles of 
the Creed. The symbol is not so much a number of separate acts 
of faith brought together in a common confession, as one single act 
rather compassing at once the whole range of the new creation from 
its commencement to its close. It has to do with its successive 
points, not as disjointed notions merely, but as concrete forces be- 
longing to the constitution of a common living whole. Its articles 
are bound together thus, with indissoluble connection, from begin- 
ning to end. To believe any one part of it in its own sense, is im- 
plicitty at least to believe every other part ; for the truth of every 
part stands in its relation to the whole system in which it is com- 
prehended, and if it be not apprehended in these relations it cannot 
be said to be apprehended and believed in its own proper sense at 
all. 

In this wa}^ it is, that the article of the Church in the Creed is 
conditioned bjr the sense of the formulary at other points; as these 
other points are conditioned also by it again in their turn. There 
can be no true faith in the resurrection and glorification of Christ, 
and none in the consequent sending of the Holy Ghost, where it is 
not felt necessary to follow out still farther the objective progress 
of the mystery, and sa}^: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church;" 
and so, on the other hand, there can be no true faith in the Church, 
where it is not perceived to be the necessary out birth in this way of 
these glorious antecedents, leading on to it, and making room for it 
in the world. It is not any and every way of owning the Church 
that can be said to satisfy the requirement of the Creed; as it is 
not enough for it either to own in any and every way the mission 
of the Holy Ghost. 



As the Creed is constructed within itself, in the wa} T now stated, 
on a theological scheme which is peculiarly its own, and which de- 
termines the true sense of it at eveiy point, requiring all its articles 
to be understood in one manner only and not in another; so it is 
easy to see, how it must in this way also draw after it a correspond- 
ing construction of all Christian doctrine beyond itself, imparting 
to it in like manner the power of its own principle and life. Bj t its 
very conception, the formulary is archetypal and regulative for the 
whole world of Christian truth. It does not pretend to exhaust 
the necessa^ topics of divinity ; it leaves room for a broad field of 
confessionalism beyond itself. But still, if it be indeed what it 
claims to be, a true scheme of what are to be considered the first 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 561 

principles of the oracles of God, it must necessarily rule the order 
and shape of all such additional belief throughout; in such wa} T 
that no doctrine or article of faith shall deserve to be counted or- 
thodox, except as it may stand in the bosom of the same scheme, 
growing forth from it, and carrying out the scope of it in a natural 
and regular way. All later confessionalism, to be genuine and 
valid, must have its genesis or birth from the Apostles' Creed, 
must refer itself to this as the real matrix of its growth and develop- 
ment. 

There must ever be a wide difference thus between a system of 
thought in which this order of faith is acknowledged and observed, 
and a system of thought in which it is disowned and disregarded; 
the theological system of the Creed and a theological system made 
to rest on any other basis ; theology in the churchly and theology 
in the unchurchlv form ; a difference not confined to the immedi- 
ate topics of the Creed itself, but extending through these to 
all topics ; a difference not so much turning on single outward 
propositions, (though on this also to some extent,) as it is to be 
measured rather by the inward life of such propositions, the way 
in which they are understood, their spirit, their general purpose 
and aim. No Christian doctrine can be held under exactly the 
same form, within the system of the Creed, and on the outside of 
this system. Thus it is, that the authority of the symbol reaches 
out to all points of faith, and pervades with its presence the whole 
range of evangelical truth, making it necessary for ever} r theological 
article to be held in full conformity with this fundamental rule, in 
order that it may have a right to be considered orthodox and true. 

It is not enough, for example, to acknowledge the prophetical, 
priestly, and kingly offices of Christ, if they be set in no union 
with the true apprehension of his Mediatorial Person. It is not 
enough to maintain infant baptism, if we refuse to own at the same 
time the relation which the sacrament is made to bear in the Creed 
to the remission of sins. It is not enough to confess the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures, if it be not with faith first in the Church ; 
as though without such an apprehension of the Christian mystery 
as leads immediately on from Christ's glorification, and the sending 
of the Holy Ghost, to this great fact, it might be possible for any 
one, leaping over it as it were and having no sense of its presence, 
to come in some other way altogether to firm faith in the Bible, as 
God's infallible word, and so through this afterwards to a full and 
complete scheme of evangelical religion. 

The Bible, great as it is in the scheme of Christianit} 7 , could not 



562 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

be substituted for the Church, in the place assigned to it as an ar- 
ticle of faith, in the Creed, without violence to the whole order and 
sense of the Creed. In the view of this archetypal symbol, it 
conies rightly for all real faith not before the Church, but after it. 
It is not the principle or beginning of Christianity, though it be 
truly its rule. It shines as a light from heaven in the Church, and 
was never intended to be a sufficient and final light for the world, 
as such, on the. outside of the Church. Rationalism, Naturalism, 
Humanitarianism, of all shapes and types, taking it in such wrong 
view, however much stress they ma}^ affect to la} T on its authority, 
never receive it truly as God's word, have no power to understand 
it, and in their use of it make it for themselves, as a matter of 
course, a mere ignis fatuus, all the world over, all " blind leaders of 
the blind. 1 ' It would be an appalling spectacle, only to see in fact 
what an amount of actual infidelity — disobedience to the faith — is 
sheltered in our time beneath the specious plea of honoring the 
Bible in this false way. 



In view of such a generic difference holding between the two 
S3 T stems, the churchly scheme of Christianity and the unchurchhv, 
the theolog}^ of the Creed and its opposite — a difference which lies 
so deep and reaches so far — it becomes a matter of peculiar inter- 
est to determine precisely what its whole character signifies and 
means. In one case, as we have seen, the Church is taken to be an 
essential constituent of the mystery of godliness, while in the 
other it is considered an arrangement belonging to it only in an 
outward, adventitious way. Here we get back to the last sense of 
the Church Question ; which is found to be at the same time 
strangel}^ implicated with the right construction of the Creed, con- 
ditioning in truth the way in which all its articles are to be under- 
stood. For not only does the Creed affirm the doctrine of the 
Church, making it a necessary part of Christianity, and so a neces- 
sary object of faith ; but it throws the entire scheme of Chris- 
tian^ into such a shape and form, from first to last, as impera- 
tively requires the doctrine in this sense, and cannot be satisfied 
without it. The Creed is constructed throughout, both in its an- 
tecedent and consequent articles, on that view of Christianity 
which involves the idea of the Church in the form now stated, and 
makes it necessary for it to come into view just Avhere it does in 
the onward flow of that good confession. This does not imply, 
however, that the Creed starts from the idea of the Church as its 
own proper principle. That which is the first question in regard 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 563 

to the doctrine of the Church itself, namely, what place is to he 
ascribed to it in the conception of Christianity, is not just the first 
question in regard to the theological system in which it is compre- 
hended as a necessary article of faith. 

When we have said, therefore, that the Church is made in the 
Creed to be of the essence of Christianity, and that all the articles 
of the symbol are so framed as to shut faith up to this conclusion, 
and that it leads on thus to an entire theology of answerable form 
and complexion throughout — it remains still to ask : What then is 
that peculiarity of doctrine in the Creed, that distinguishing quality 
of faith, back of its doctrine of the Church, which calls this forth 
in its order, gives to it all its force, and imparts what we call a 
churchly character to the universal scheme of religion into which 
it enters as an organic part ? What is the root or beginning of the 
broad difference, which reigns between the Catholic Christianity of 
the first ages and the Puritanic Christianity of modern times, be- 
tween the theology which breathes the spirit of the Creed and the 
theology which breathes a different spirit, between the churchly con- 
struction of the Gospel and the unchurchly ? It is not easy to con- 
ceive of a theological inquiry more interesting than this, or more 
worthy of being followed out with right study to a right answer. 



Were we called upon to give in a word the distinguishing pecu- 
liarity of the Creed, in the view suggested by the inquiry, we 
should place it in the historical character it assigns to the Chris- 
tian salvation, regarded as a supernatural process of grace, in op- 
position to every scheme which resolves it into a matter of mere 
speculative thought. Its doctrine of the Church falls back on its 
doctrine of Christ ; and this is made to include, from first to last, 
the conception of a real union between the divine and the human, 
the life of God and the life of man, in the person of the Mediator, 
carrying along with it the work of redemption, as the process of a 
new creation in the bosom of the old, onward to the end of time. 

In the Creed, as in the New Testament, Christianity has its last 
ground in the mystery of the Ever Blessed and Glorious Trinity; 
which is exhibited as an object for faith, however, not so much in 
the light of a doctrine, as in the light of a fact, opening the way 
for the revelation which God has been pleased to make of himself 
through the mystery of the Incarnation. This forms, accordingly, 
an act of self-manifestation on the part of God, by which he is to 
be regarded as coming into the world in a sense in which he had 
not been in it before, for the purpose of redeeming and saving men 



564 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

from their sins. The Word became Flesh. That is the beginning 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and power to own and confess it, 
not as a dogma merely, but as a simple historical fact, is the be- 
ginning of all faith in the proper evangelical sense of the term. 
The beginning of all heresy, on the other hand, lies in the open or 
virtual denial of this great mystery. Hence St. John's memorable 
touch-stone for distinguishing true Christianity from that which is 
spurious and false. " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ 
is come in the flesh," he tells us, "is of God; and every spirit that 
confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; 
and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it 
should come; and even now already is it in the world." 

The spirit of antichrist, in this way, is the rationalistic temper 
of the natural mind, which substitutes for the mj'stery of the In- 
carnation in its proper form a mere notional construction of Christ's 
person, in which, after all, no real historical union of the divine 
nature with the human is allowed to have place; setting up thus in 
opposition to the true Christ a false shadowy image, a mere spirit- 
ualistic phantom, which is made to counterfeit his name and usurp 
his place. Over against all such rationalistic spiritualism, the 
Creed makes full earnest with the criterion of St. John. It takes 
up and carries out in its own simple, historical way, that notable 
confession of Peter: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living- 
God;" in reference to* which our Saviour said: "Blessed art thou, 
Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 
but m}^ Father which is in heaven." 

The merit of Peter's faith stood in its power to break over the 
natural order of the world, so as to see and acknowledge in the 
person of Christ, there actually before him, the presence of a new 
and higher form of existence, joining the nature of God with the 
nature of man in a way transcending all common understanding 
and thought. Thou, Jesus of Nazareth, it could say — whom we 
know to be in all respects a real man like ourselves, and no spirit 
merebv in human show — Thou, the Son of Mary, art at the same 
time the Son of the Most High God, and as such the Messiah, the 
true Saviour of the world. Such precisely is the confession, which 
forms the burden of the Apostles' Creed. Its theme ma} T be said 
to be throughout, "Christ come in the flesh." In that fact, the ob- 
jective mj'stery of godliness (1 Tim. 3: 16), it sees the whole ful- 
ness of salvation, the entire economy of redemption; and it lays 
itself out, accordingly, to set it forth in its necessaiy conditions 
and consequences, under a purely historical view, as the proper 



Chap. XLIII] thoughts on the church 565 

substance of Christianity, the one grand object of all true Chris- 
tian faith. 

So apprehended, the Gospel is in no sense theoretical, but su- 
premely practical. It is the presence of a supernatural fact in the 
world, confronting men under an outward form, carrying in itself 
objectively the powers of the world to come, and challenging actual 
submission to its claims in such view as the only way in which it 
is possible to be saved. Faith has to do in the case, first of all, 
not with any doctrines which may be supposed to flow from the 
fact, but with the fact itself as a simple matter of history ; the 
history being, however, at the same time, supernatural, out of the 
whole ordinary course of things in the world, and requiring, there- 
fore, a very different kind of belief from that which is needed to 
take up the facts of history in its common human form. It is a 
great thing — too great for the reach of mere natural thought — to 
believe truly that Christ has come in the flesh; that Jesus was no 
mere man attended by the extraordinary inspiration of the Al- 
mighty, according to the old Ebionitic view; and yet no mere 
shadow either, according to any of the old Gnostic theories ; but 
that in him the Word became actually and enduringly incarnate 
for us men and for our salvation. 

On this supernatural fact the Creed fastens its whole attention, 
referring it to its necessary origin, and following it out steadily 
to its necessary results, all in the way of simple historical appre- 
hension and conception. Christ, the Son of God, we are required 
to believe, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy 
Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. He suffered, died, 
descended into hades. But it was not possible that he should be 
held under the power of death. He rose again ; He ascended on 
high, leading captivity captive, and having all power given unto 
Him in heaven and in earth. All this served only to prepare the 
way for His kingdom in the world, through the mission of the Holy 
Ghost, His great ascension gift, and the constitution of the Church, 
which is declared by St. Paul to be His body, the fulness of Him 
that filleth all in all, and with which He has himself promised to be 
present always to the end of time. In the Church, accordingly, as 
distinguished from the natural constitution of the world, the new 
order of grace brought to pass by the victory of Christ over sin, 
death, and hell, runs its course from age to age, in the salvation of 
all true believers. " We confess one baptism for the remission of 
sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the 
world to come." 



CHAPTER XLIV 

DR. NEYIX was born and educated in a Calvinistic Churchy 
and in his younger da}-s it is not probable that he ever pre- 
sumed to question the doctrine of divine predestination as taught 
in the Westminster Confession of Faith. When he became pro- 
fessor of theolog}' at Mercersburg he still held it in a moderate 
sense, but seldom, if ever, preached on the subject. After stating 
the doctrine cautious^ in its different phases to his classes, he was 
accustomed to close his remarks by sa} T ing that the whole subject 
was "a deep, unfathomable nrystery." In the progress of his theo- 
logical thinking he came to feel that it could not in all respects be 
made to harmonize with Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, 
and he allowed his view of the decrees to be considerably modified. 
He was also led to believe that it could not be reconciled with 
Scriptural views of the Church. This conflict he sought to point 
out in the Mercersburg Review, in the April and July numbers, in 
a review of Dr. Hodge's Commentaiy on the Ephesians. The two 
articles fill out ninety-two pages, of which we here supply the reader 
with the leading paragraphs, containing the main argument. 

The distinguished character and high, position of the author of 
this work, taken in connection with the wide significance of its 
subject, must be allowed on all hands to clothe it with more than 
ordinary claims to attention. The Epistle to the Ephesians is of 
cardinal authority, in particular for the doctrine of the Church; 
and it forms in such view the key, we may say, for the right under- 
standing of all St. Paul's Epistles generally, which must serve of 
course also, at the same time, to open the true sense of all the other 
Epistles of the New Testament. Knowing this, we could not be 
indifferent to the view that might be taken of it b}^ such a man as 
Dr. Hodge. His theoiy of the Church, as it has been presented to 
the world in various waj T s, is commonly understood to be very 
low; so low indeed, that it has given serious dissatisfaction -to 
many in his own communion. It has been a matter of interest with 
us to see how such a theoiy would be applied in his hands to the 
interpretation of the Epistle to the Ephesians. We have, accord- 
ingly, examined the new Commentary with respectful consideration 
and care; and having done so, we propose now to make it the oc- 

(566) 



Chap. XLIV] hodge on the ephestans 567 

casion for some earnest criticism and discussion, in our present 
article. 

It is hardly necessary to say, that this Commentary of Dr. Hodge 
is constructed upon a general theory of the nature of Christianity, 
thus previousl}' established and fixed in his own mind. If it were 
not so, the work would be entitled to but small regard. We find 
no fault with it merely on this ground. Only let the fact be fairly 
understood and kept in sight; that we ma}^ make due account of it, 
in examining the w r ork itself. It is not an attempt to explain the 
Epistle to the Ephesians purely and exclusively from its own text, 
and without any sort of theological preconception or bias. It can 
hardly be said, indeed, to pretend to such independence. However 
it may suit the view of some to make light of all authority in this 
form, and to look upon tradition of every kind as an embarrassment 
to the right use of the Scriptures more than a help, we meet with 
no such pedantry in Dr. Hodge. He has his theological S3 T stem, 
his ecclesiastical tradition, that serves him continually as a medium 
through which to study the features and proportions of the inspired 
text. Neither is it difficult at all to determine the character of this 
system. It is well defined, openly acknowledged, and for the most 
part, though not always, consistently maintained. We may see at 
once, in such circumstance, how necessary it is that we should try 
the merits of the system, in order to estimate aright the merits of 
the Commentary. 

No one can have read the Epistles of the New Testament with any 
sort of attention, without being made sensible in his own mind of 
a certain difficulty in them, standing not so much in particular pas- 
sages as in the whole hypothesis which is made to underlie their 
construction. Two seemingly opposite views are embraced in this, 
which it is found exceedingly hard to reconcile or hold in steady 
union. Let us endeavor to exemplify and explain. 

Nothing can be more clear, in the first place, than that these 
Epistles are not addressed to the world at large in its natural char- 
acter and state. For the world in such view, the Gospel univer- 
sally has but one form of address. It calls on all men everywhere 
to "repent and believe," to submit themselves to Christ, to be 
"converted," to be "baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the 
remission of sins," as the absolutely indispensable condition of holi- 
ness and salvation. " He that believeth and is baptized," the proc- 
lamation runs, " shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." All depends on this obedience of faith. All begins here. 
Without this preliminary act of submission to Christ's authority, 



568 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

the opportunities and possibilities of grace in any farther view are 
not regarded as being at hand for the use of men at all. The 
Gospel never offers its grace for the purposes of sanctification, to 
those who refuse to place themselves by such preliminary obedience, 
within the range and scope of its supernatural provisions; and it 
never allows itself, therefore, to waste upon such its lessons of piety 
or its motives to a holy life. So with these New Testament Epis- 
tles. They are full of doctrine, instruction in righteousness, warn- 
ings, admonitions, promises, encouragements to Christian duty; 
but all this for a certain class of persons only, and not for the race 
of mankind indiscriminately. 

This is at once evident from their inscriptions and salutations. 
They are addressed not to countries or towns as such, but to par- 
ticular bodies of people in them separated and distinguished in 
some way from the world in general. St. Jude writes, "To them 
that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus 
Christ, and called." St. Peter, in one place, "To them that have 
obtained like precious faith with us, through the righteousness of 
God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; 1 ' in another, to dispersed 
strangers of Pont as, Galatia, &c, who are regarded, at the same 
time, as gathered together and elect "according to the foreknowl- 
edge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto 
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." So in 
every Epistle of St. Paul. One is : " To all that be in Rome, be- 
loved of God, called to be saints;" another: "Unto the Church of 
God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ 
Jesus, called to be saints;" a third: "Unto the church of God 
which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia; " a 
fourth: "Unto the churches of Galatia ;" a fifth : "To the saints 
which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus;" and in 
similar style throughout. And the restriction thus made in the 
first address is always carefully observed in every Epistle on to 
the end. The writers do not allow themselves to fall away from 
the conception with which they start, by gliding into any more 
loose and general view. They have before their mind alwa}'S, not 
men at large, but the particular class or description of persons to 
whom they address themselves in the beginning. Their instruc- 
tions and exhortations are everywhere for the ." Church," for the 
"Called," for those who are known as the "Faithful in Christ 
Jesus." 

All this, we say, forms one general aspect, under which the con- 
ception of Christianity is continually presented to us in the New 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 569 

Testament Epistles. Along with this, however, in the second 
place, there runs throughout another view, which seems at first to 
look in quite a different direction, and to place the whole subject 
in a new and different light. It may be denominated, with propriety 
perhaps, the human side of the case, as distinguished from its di- 
vine side. 

We are confronted with it at once in all those representations, 
which require us to descend from the idea of the lofty privileges 
of believers, to the thought of the manifold infirmities with which 
they are still compassed about in their present state. Who has not 
experienced at times some sense of incongruity, in passing directly 
from the wonderful terms in which these privileges are described 
by St. Peter or St. Paul, to the topics of ordinary morality they 
are made to enforce ? It sounds strangely, to hear those who are 
spoken of as sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, exhorted, 
at the same time, to avoid the most common sins, such as lying and 
stealing, and warned against " fellowship with the unfruitful works 
of darkness " among the heathen, including things done by them 
in secret, of which it was a "shame even to speak." It sounds 
strangely, when the power of the Spirit and the power of the flesh, 
the life of grace and the life of nature, are brought before us in 
such close proximity as we find ascribed to them in the fifth chap- 
ter of the Epistle to the G-alatians. "Walk in the Spirit," it is 
there said, "and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh : and 
these are contrary the one to the other ; so that ye cannot do the 
things that ye would. But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not 
under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are 
these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, 
witchcraft, etc." The occasion for admiration here is, not that 
such sins are condemned as contrary to Christianity, but that those 
who are addressed should be supposed to be at all liable to the 
power of them in the immediate and near way that seems to be 
implied by such a style of exhortation. 

Here then is a peculiar and different problem to be solved, in the 
interpretation of these Epistles. How are we to bring together the 
two sides that enter thus into their general hypothesis of Chris- 
tianity, seemingly incongruous as they are, in such a way that we 
shall have a result doing full justice to both, and uniting them in 
real logical harmony for our thoughts? It is plain, that no scheme 
of exegesis which fails to do this, however much it may have to 
recommend it on other grounds, can be entitled to confidence; since 
36 



5 TO IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

it must be constructed on a view of the Gospel different from that 
which pervades the Epistles themselves, and can never serve, there- 
fore, as a sufficient ke}^ to unlock their sense. 

Now there are two general ways in which a theory of interpreta- 
tion ma} T wrong the New Testament conception of Christianity, as 
we have just had it under consideration. It tcislj not do justice to 
the first side of the hypothesis, or it may not do justice to the 
second. In the one case, we shall have the idea of nature over- 
whelmed in a certain sense b} r a false sublimation of the idea of 
grace ; in the other case, the order will be reversed, and we shall 
have the idea of grace merged and lost in the idea of nature. For 
the sake of distinction, we nuvy call one the Calvinistic and the 
other the Arminian tendency. 

The Arminian view proceeds on the supposition, that there is no 
essential difference between the order of nature and the order of 
grace. It acknowledges, of course, the existence of grace, regarded 
as a supernatural power exerted upon the minds of men ; but this 
is not felt to depend on any other order or constitution than that 
of the world under a simply natural view, considered in the general 
relation which it sustains to God. Man in his natural character is 
possessed of intellectual and spiritual faculties, which carrj T his 
thoughts above and beyond the present world, and qualif}^ him for 
entering into communication with the realities of a higher life in 
the wa} r of religion ; and the idea here is, that in order to do so, he 
needs no other help than what 'is comprehended in the notion of a 
common divine influence exercised upon his powers for this pur- 
pose. The whole conception of grace thus resolves itself into this, 
that God, by his Spirit, is supposed to act on the minds of men, 
just as the}^ are, directly and indirectly, without an} T intervention 
whatever ; and it is supposed also to depend upon themselves, in 
the use of their natural ability, whether such gracious influence 
shall be of avail or not for the purposes of salvation. Such a view, 
of course, leaves no room for the idea of the Church, as a real 
economy or constitution different from the world. 

How completely this system of thought fails to do justice to the 
Epistles of the New Testament, we need not spend time now in 
endeavoring to show. Our business at present is more immediatel}' 
with the opposite form of one-sided thinking presented to us bj T 
the Calvinistic tendenc}' ; for this it is that governs throughout the 
New Testament exegesis of Dr. Hodge, as it comes before us in his 
Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians. 

Here we have a false sublimation of the idea of grace, by which 



Chap. XLIV] hodge on the ephesians 571 

in the end serious wrong is done to the proper human side of the 
Christian salvation. All is made to resolve itself into divine 
agency, under such a form as fairly lifts the process of redemption 
out of the sphere of man's proper life, and causes it to go forward 
in another and different sphere altogether. The doctrine of elec- 
tion, turning on the notion of an absolute unconditional decree in 
the mind of God, is made to be the principle, and only really effi- 
cient cause, we may say, of the whole work. God having of his 
mere good pleasure determined, from all eternity, to save a certain 
fixed number of persons belonging to the human family, and not 
to save any besides, is supposed then to have ordered the entire 
plan of redemption in subordination to this purpose. All the pro- 
visions of His grace, including the fact of the Incarnation itself, 
the atonement made by Christ's death, the benefits of His resurrec- 
tion, the mission of the Holy Ghost, the establishment of the 
Church, the Bible, the ministry of reconciliation, and the holy sac- 
raments, are conditioned and limited, according to this view, by 
the settled and foregone conclusion which it is proposed to reach 
by their means ; becoming, under such aspect, a sort of outward 
mechanical apparatus merely in its service. 

The result is an ultra spiritualistic, shadowy idea of redemption, 
in which no real union is allowed after all to have place between 
the powers of heaven and the necessities of earth; and in full cor- 
respondence with this, a complete dualism is brought into the con- 
ception of the Christian life also, regarded as the subjective or ex- 
perimental appropriation, on the part of believers, of the grace 
thus objectively provided on their behalf. The human and divine 
factors are indeed both acknowledged, as entering in some way to- 
gether into the process of conversion and sanctification ; but no 
room is found for their free and harmonious co-operation. God 
becomes all, and man practically nothing; the consequence of 
which here again is, that religion becomes a scheme of mere ab- 
stract spiritualism, which, carried out consistently, can hardly fail 
to turn it at last into a cloud-like phantom or hollow shadow, the 
counterpart in full of its own profoundly kindred error, the chris- 
tological dream of the ancient Gnostics. 

For the application of this system to the exposition of the New 
Testament, we could have no better example than Dr. Hodge's 
Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians. It proceeds upon 
the Calvinistic hypothesis, as now described, from beginning to 
end. So far as we can see, too, he does not shrink from acknowl- 
edging this hypothesis in its only fully consistent form, the su- 



572 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

pralapsarian conception, we mean, as held by Calvin himself, though 
not generally 03^ his followers. According to that conception, as 
is well known, the decree of election, issuing in the salvation of 
the elect as the last end of God's works, so far as man is concerned, 
is taken to precede and govern in the order of being, not simply 
the idea of redemption, but the idea also of the fall itself; the 
amount of which is, that God, having in mind his own glorification 
in the salvation of the elect and perdition of the non-elect, deter- 
mined first the creation of the race, and then its fall, in order to 
make room for what was his ulterior purpose in that other form. 
Dr. Hodge does not, indeed, in so many words, adopt this supra- 
lapsarian theory ; but it is the only view, we think, that suits what 
he says of the predestination of a fixed number of human beings, 
from all eternity, to everlasting life. It is certain, at all events, 
that this decree is made hy him to be the principium of everything 
that is comprehended in the scheme of redemption itself, and that 
all its arrangements and provisions, accordingly, are considered as 
being circumscribed and limited by it in their force. They are 
universally for the elect only, and no part of the fallen world be- 
sides. Their scope and emcienc} T are absolute^ bounded by the 
range of this narrow circle, unalterabty settled in the Divine mind 
from all eternit}^, and cannot be said to extend beyond this reall}^ 
in any direction whatever. 

Predestination in this sense, and no other, is the " primal foun- 
tain," we are told, "of all spiritual blessings," as involving for the 
saints their "election to holiness before the foundation of the 
world." The nrvsteiy of the Incarnation thus took place only for 
the elect, whom it was determined beforehand thus to save. Aside 
from them, it would not have occurred at all ; and for the rest of 
the world it has in fact no saving purpose or power of saay sort. 
The rest of the world is not in a salvable state ; for the economy 
of the Gospel is such, that the principle of its grace, considered 
here as an absolute decree in the Divine mind, cannot be said to 
reach even potentially those who stand outside the circumference 
of this decree. Salvation, as a possibility only, has just as little 
significance for them, as it would have if they belonged to another 
world entirely. Power to become the sons of God, the great priv- 
ilege and prerogative of as many as receive Christ (John 1 : 12), 
belong, exclusively, to the elect. All others are doomed to hope- 
less impenitency and unbelief. Alas, what should they believe, if 
this view of the Gospel be itself the very truth of God which the}' 
are bound, under pain of damnation, to receive ? For an}^ of the 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 573 

non-elect to believe that Christ died for them, or that he is willing 
now to save them, must be, according to Dr. Hodge's scheme, to 
believe what is absolutely and eternally untrue. To agree at all 
with the actual truth of things, their faith must own and confess 
precisely the reverse. 

All this, we know, sounds monstrous enough. But we hold it 
to be a perfectly fair, unvarnished representation of the theology, 
which Dr. Hodge has brought with him as the compass and pole- 
star of his observations on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. 
The doctrine of election, as he holds it, involves be} r ond the possi- 
bility of logical escape, the notion of a corresponding partiality 
and limitation in all the arrangements of grace. Make such a de- 
cree the principle of salvation, and it must necessarily reduce the 
means of salvation throughout to the measure of its own action 
and intention. It will be no longer true, that Christ died for all 
men, made atonement for all, triumphed over death for all, and now 
reigns head over all things to the Church for all, having sent forth 
His ministers to preach repentance and faith to all, that they might 
be saved. Regarded as a merely external administration indeed, 
Christianity may claim and appear also to possess such universality 
of character. But looking to its proper spiritual economy, we find 
all to be different. In God's mind, it is a plan to save the elect 
only ; the agency of his Spirit goes along with it, to make it cer- 
tainly efficacious for this end ; beyond this, it carries in it neither 
purpose nor power of grace for any of the children of men. 

How exceedingly arbitrary all this is, and how little it agrees 
with the plain text of St. Paul himself, it is not our business just 
now to show. We bring it forward simply to exemplify the view 
which Dr. Hodge takes of the Church, from one end of his Com- 
mentary to the other. It agrees in full with his conception of the 
nature of Christianity, as being essentially a scheme of pure abstract 
spiritualism, starting in the election of certain individuals to salva- 
tion, and having no real significance or force beyond the carrying 
out of this purpose, which, at the same time, it cannot fail infallibly 
to reach. Under no such aspect can the Church be regarded as an 
outward and visible organization, carrying in it as such the powers 
of a higher world. Indeed it can be no organization at all ; except 
in the character of a mental notion merely employed to generalize 
what are held to be the common attributes of its constituent mem- 
bers, as they are known certainly to God, though with no certainty 
to the world or to one another. It answers only to the invisible 
process of redemption, as it lies behind the dramatic show with 



5?4 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

which it is made to play its part in the outward world, and not at 
all to this show itself. These two conceptions fall asunder com- 
pletely. There is no inward connection between them. The in- 
visible fact and the visible fact come to no organic union whatever. 
They do not meet together in the idea of any single constitution, 
but present to our contemplation always what must be regarded as 
two Churches, in truth, instead of one. The scheme in this view is 
grossly dualistic. 

Such dualism subverts realty the old doctrine of the Church, as 
it entered into the faith of the first ages, and continues to challenge 
the faith of the world still in the Apostles' Creed. It converts its 
whole being into a shadow, which, while it seems to promise much, 
means at last literally nothing for the process of man's salvation. 
Neither the true Church, in the sense of Dr. Hodge's distinction, 
nor the Church which is such in name onty and outward show, can 
be said to add anything realty to the "myster}^ of godliness," as 
otherwise ordered and made sure for its own ends. Neither the 
visible nor the invisible Church can be regarded in the light of a con- 
stitution, intervening with an}^ real force between heaven and earth, 
and serving as the necessaiy form of all actual correspondence be- 
tween them in the way of grace. 

But the invisible Church of this dualistic theoiy is no more 
suited than its notion of the visible Church, for the office here in 
question; and just as little account is made of it in fact under any 
such view. It adds nothing to the conception of Christianity, as 
apprehended without it. It is in truth nothing more than this 
conception itself, thus previously full and complete. It is at best 
the comprehension onty of the "elect," whose salvation is a fact 
already secured under quite another aspect and view, and who thus 
bring with them in their character of saints all that is made to be- 
long to them in its communion. 

What has been now said ma}* serve sufficientty to show the gen- 
eral nature of the Calvinistic hj^pothesis, on which Dr. Hodge 
relies so confidently for the right interpretation of the Epistle to 
the Ephesians. It is sufficient also to show, we think, how unequal 
his Commentary must necessarily be to the task of meeting and 
solving what we have already seen to be the fundamental exegetical 
problem brought to view in the structure of the Epistle itself. 
The hypothesis does not answer at all to the terms and conditions 
of this problem, as it has been already stated and described. It 
does not even seek to reconcile and unite the two apparently dis- 
crepant views of Christianity that run through the Epistle. It 



Chap. XLI\ r ] hodge on the ephesians 575 

throws itself upon one of these views in a great measure exclu- 
sively of the other; and in this way violently breaks the knot which 
it has no power to unloose. 

It does well in asserting over against Arminianism the claims of 
grace as forming in the work of redemption an order of life and 
power, distinct from nature and above it ; but doing this in such a 
way as practically to sunder the two spheres altogether, it falls into 
a like one-sidedness in the opposite direction, making so much of 
God's agency as to turn, the activity of man in fact into mere dumb 
show. With such a character, how can it possibly do justice to 
the text of the New Testament, or serve as a mirror to reflect the 
mind of St. Paul ? Looking at the theory then as it is in itself, 
and comparing it with the plain demands of the case, we have the 
most perfect right to anticipate not any more particular investiga- 
tion, and to say beforehand that the Commentary before us cannot 
possible give us the true scope and sense of the Epistle it pretends 
to expound. The difficulty is not with the learning or ability of 
its distinguished author. These may be all that could be expected 
or 'desired. It lies in the preconceived scheme of thought which 
he feels himself bound to apply to the text, as the necessary norm 
of its meaning ; but which is found to be in truth so foreign from 
the genius of the text itself, that no amount of learning can ever 
be able to interpret this faithfully and fairly by its means. 

If this general a priori judgment in regard to the work at large 
be at all correct, we may take it for granted that it cannot fail to 
be corroborated and confirmed by an examination of it in its details. 
It is only what might be anticipated, therefore, when we look into 
it. and find its actual course of exposition attended with embarrass- 
ment and contradiction from the very start. 

Take first of all the topic of election, which is found to be of 
such cardinal significance for the interpretation of the whole Epis- 
tle. With the merits of the doctrine itself in its Calvinistic form, 
as held by Dr. Hodge, we are not here immediately concerned. 
We have nothing to do with it now as a question of metaphysics 
or of general theology. What we have before us is a simple point 
of exegesis, which is not to be settled by any such speculation one 
way or the other. We ask not, whether the Calvinistic dogma, in 
itself considered, be right or wrong ; but whether it be really and 
truly what was in the mind of St. Paul in writing this Epistle to 
the Ephesians, so as to be still the proper key to the actual sense 
of the Epistle itself. That is now the only question; and it is one 
which we find ourselves at no loss whatever to answer. The elec- 



576 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

tion of grace on which so much stress is laid by St. Paul, and which 
is made by him here and elsewhere to underlie the whole conception 
of the Christian Church, is not just of one and the same order 
with the " absolute decree " of Calvinism, regarded as determining 
the destination of every man to glory or perdition from all eternity. 
To settle this point, it is not necessar}^ that we should be able to 
explain in full the relation of the two forms of thinking to each 
other ; nor even that we should have it in our power to comprehend 
precisely the actual view of the Apostle at all points. It is enough 
to see, that the suppositions and assumptions which are involved 
in the one hypothesis, cannot be brought by any strain of logic to 
agree with what is plainly postulated and required by the other. 
No rule can be more sure or easy of application than this ; and we 
need no other, for fulty deciding the question here in hand. 

The Calvinistic theory of election, presented to us in the Com- 
mentary, connects the beginning of salvation for all who are pre- 
destinated to life indissolubly with its end. There is no room to 
conceive of it coming short of its ultimate purpose in a single case. 
In addressing then " the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus ' r at 
Ephesus, St. Paul is to be regarded, according to this view, as 
having in his mind's eye directly those in whom this absolute decree 
had already begun to work surety towards its own end, and no 
others. None besides may be thought of as having any true den- 
izenship in the kingdom of God. The conception of that kingdom 
is held to be necessarily of one and the same measure, with the 
actual operation of this absolute decree in those who are its sub- 
jects. The} 7 alone have part realty in the "vocation" of the 
Gospel ; and for them this heaA^enly calling is itself the guaranty 
and pledge, most surely, of everlasting life. 

But now it must be plain, we think, for any unsophisticated 
reader, looking into the Epistle itself, that its theory of distinguish- 
ing grace, whatever it ma} 7 be, is something widely different from 
this, something which refuses to coalesce with it altogether, and 
that demands absolutely quite another construction of Christianity. 
The " elect," whom St. Paul addresses, whom he describes as " called 
to be saints " and as " sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," 
and who form for him the idea of the Church which is u the body 
of Christ, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all," are not at once, 
to his mind, such as have been predestinated by an absolute decree, 
from all eternity, to everlasting salvation, and are now regarded as 
moving forward by the power of it, with unerring certaint} 7 , to this 
pre-ordained result. 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 5T? 

We have plain evidence of the contrary in every part of the 
Epistle. The difficulties it offers in the way of Dr. Hodge's scheme 
are of the most unyielding kind ; and they come up in every chapter, 
we had almost said in every paragraph and verse ; so that recourse 
must be had everywhere to arbitrary and unnatural suppositions, 
to set them aside. The Epistle goes throughout on the supposi- 
tion (common, we may add, to the entire New Testament), that 
those whom it addresses as Christians, chosen and called of God to 
the high and glorious privileges of the Church, might still fail to 
"make their calling and election sure." This single fact, too plain 
to be disputed by any honest and unprejudiced mind, is sufficient 
to settle the question under consideration. It shows conclusively 
that the "elect," in the sense of St. Paul, are not the same with the 
"elect" in Calvin's sense; and that the New Testament conception 
of the Church is something much wider than any theological view, 
by which it is made to be the invisible comprehension simply of 
that favored class whom God has predestinated to everlasting life, 
and in whose case thus the work of salvation once begun has no 
power ever to fail. 

And so with the Epistles of the New Testament in general. 
They look, in all their communications, directly and exclusively 
to the Church as distinguished from the world, to the congregation 
of those who are denominated saints, and described as the chosen 
and called of God in Christ Jesus. They keep themselves contin- 
ualty to this rule. They have to do only with "them that are 
within " (1 Cor. 5 : 12), and not at all with "them that are without." 
With them that are within, moreover, the}^ have to do plainly in 
their collective character. It is not to a part only they speak, a 
still narrower circle mentally described within the limits of this 
first outward distinction. They speak to bodies of men, separa- 
ted from the rest of the world in a visible, external way ; and to 
these, as such, the}^ refer without hesitation the lofty titles, the 
high privileges, the heavenly immunities and prerogatives of the 
Christian Church. Yet of those who are regarded as partaking 
of this glorious distinction, in such general view, do they again 
go on with just as little hesitation, to predicate, at the same time, 
directly and indirectly, the real possibility of sin, in forms involv- 
ing an entire forfeiture of every advantage they had come to pos- 
sess. However it may be with the Calvinistic doctrine of election, 
it is certain that the election and vocation here brought into view 
carry with them no sort of guaranty whatever for the final salva- 
tion of their subjects. 



518 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

We repeat then what we have said before. The doctrine of elec- 
tion in the common sense of the New Testament, and as we have 
it proclaimed alike by St. Peter and St. Paul, is not the doctrine of 
election which is set before us in the theologj^ of John Calvin. This 
is our thesis; and for the present (let it be well kept in mind), 
nothing more than this. Our business now, as has been alread} T 
said, is not with the merits of the Calvinistic dogma absolutely 
considered. The argument for it in its philosophico-theological 
form, as set forth for example by Schleiermacher, is one certainly 
which it can never be easy to meet. But the question now before 
us is not one of philosoplrv Or general theolog}'. It is a question 
purely of exegesis. What we deny, is not the truth of metaphys- 
ical Calvinism as such, but its identity with the idea of election as 
it is found to underlie the conception of the Church in the sense 
of the Xew Testament. The two forms of thought, we say with 
the greatest confidence, are not the same. We hold it, therefore, 
for a fundamental fault in this Commentary of Dr. Hodge, that the 
difference between them is altogether overlooked, that St. Paul's 
doctrine of the "election of grace" is arbitrarily taken to be pre- 
cisely of one measure with the doctrine of predestination to eternal 
life as held by Calvin, and that this last is then used as a key 
throughout, instead of the first, to open and expound the deep 
meaning of the Epistle to the Ephesiaus. 

The consequences of so radical a mistake cannot fail, of course, 
to extend very far. They must affect the complexion of the entire 
Commentaiy, and may be expected seriously to vitiate the value of 
its expositions at every point. Our limits, however, will not allow 
us to pursue the subject an y farther at the present time. We hope 
to take it up again hereafter, in another article. This will give us 
an opportunity of examining more fully the true import and bearing 
of St. Paul's idea of election ; as it will make it necessary for us also 
to go somewhat particularly into the consideration of his doctrine 
of the Church; the proper parallel of that other idea, by the help 
of which alone it is possible to satisfy the opposing conditions of 
the great exegetical problem which runs, as we have already seen, 
through all his Epistles, so as to bring into their exposition the feel- 
ing of order, harmony and light. The true doctrine of the Church 
here is for the Calvinistic and Arminian theories, what the true 
doctrine of Christ's person was in the first centuries for the dreams 
of the Gnostic on the one side and the dreams of the Ebionite on 
the other, the glorious everlasting synthesis under a real form of 
what they have no power to unite except in the way of shadow. 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 519 

Those whom St. Paul addresses collectively as saints, chosen of 
God to be holy, partakers of the heavenly calling and heirs of eternal 
salvation, are not regarded by him certainly as the possessors of a 
merely nominal and imaginary distinction, over against the world 
at large with which their state is thus broadly contrasted and com- 
pared. It is not in the wa} T of compliment only or conventional 
form, most clearly, that he can be supposed to speak of it in such 
lofty terms. Nothing can be more plain, than that for his mind 
the difference between their condition and that of the world around 
them was most substantial and real, and of a kind to warrant in 
full all the strength of language he was accustomed to use in regard 
to it. His sense of difficulty, in setting forth the significance of 
the distinction, is not that his terms are too high for his subject, 
but only that they come not up to the proper greatness of it, as he 
finds it overwhelming his own thoughts. It is no simply outward 
separation alone, no merely nominal peculiarit}^ of position, which 
in the view of the Apostle goes to make up the true idea of the 
Christian profession, the state into which men are brought b}^ en- 
tering the hallowed precincts of the Church. This state, as he 
looks upon it, sets all who are in it, whether the privilege be prop- 
erly improved or not, in a relation to God which cannot be said 
to exist at all for others. 

The possibility of salvation here is made to assume a far higher 
form, than all it is ever found to be in the world at large. It is no 
longer the mere capability of being saved, but in a most material 
sense salvation already begun. The difference of relation to the 
powers of redemption is not merely in degree, but actually and 
truly in kind. A new order of life has been entered, the order of 
grace as distinguished from the order of mere nature. In this re- 
spect, the state includes a strictly supernatural character. Those 
who are in it stand, by virtue of their position, in correspondence 
with the powers of a higher world, the mysterious forces of the new 
creation in Christ Jesus, in a way not possible to men in any other 
condition. They are brought within the range and sweep of that 
victorious dispensation, which having run its course first in the per- 
son of the. Saviour himself, is now revealing its presence in the 
world, through the Spirit, for the final and complete salvation of 
his people. To this salvation they have already a full title. It is 
theirs by covenant and promise, and they have full opportunity to 
come at last into its possession. 

Such clearly is the conception of the Christian state, in its dis- 
tinction from the general condition of the world, as it dwells in the 



580 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlY. X 

mind of St. Paul. And this conception forms for him precisely 
the idea of the Church; the sense of which enters so largely into 
all his Epistles, but most of all we may sa}^ into this Epistle to 
the Ephesians ; underlying as it does here the universal course of 
his thought, and forming in truth the key note around which it 
seems to proceed throughout, as a grand and magnificent anthem, 
belonging not so much to earth as to the skies. 

Answering to the view now described, the Church is regarded 
by St. Paul as a real constitution, of supernatural origin and force, 
existing in the world under an outward historical form, and com- 
prehending in it the opportunity and possibility of salvation as 
they are to be found nowhere else. It finds its symbol or type in 
the Ark, which served in the days of Noah to save those who 
sought refuge in it from the waters of the deluge. So far as it laj T 
in the power of the unbelieving and disobedient generally, at that 
time, to give heed to the Divine warning and betake themselves to 
the hope which was set before them in this form, it might be said 
that there was a possibility for them to be saved. But the possi- 
bility of salvation for those who had alread} T entered the Ark, as 
we can see at once, was of a very different kind. It was not such 
indeed, in its own nature, as to make it absolutely necessary for 
them to be saved. There was no room, it is true, for any question 
in regard to the full sufficiency of the Ark for this purpose. But 
it was possible for those who were in it, to frustrate for themselves 
its merciful purpose and design. They might forsake it through 
unbelief; or staying in it, they might neglect the needful conditions 
of life, so as to come short finally of the proper end of their pro- 
bation. 

Notwithstanding all this, however, their state was already one 
of glorious miraculous privilege, as compared with the condition 
of the world at large. It placed them in a new order of existence, 
and brought them into living actual communication with the scheme 
of grace which God had been pleased to provide for the deliverance 
of His people. It was in such view this deliverance itself, already 
in sure progress towards its appointed end. In these circum- 
stances, those who were in the Ark might be spoken of easily 
enough as possessing from the first the full and entire salvation 
which was really comprehended in its constitution for their benefit ; 
although this was not yet reached, and might possibly never be 
reached by all of them in fact ; since that must depend, in the na- 
ture of the case, on their own persevering use of the means they 
enjoyed for this purpose. Still all might be said to be theirs, as 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 581 

soon as they passed from the sphere of nature here into the sphere 
of grace. They were rescued from the general condemnation of 
the world. They were made secure from its impending destruction. 
They were prepared to outride the flood. They might be said even 
to have a present footing on the shores of the new earth, which 
they were called to seek through its waters. 

So apprehended, the Church is found to be, in a most important 
sense, the necessary medium of salvation for men. How should it 
be otherwise, if it be indeed the constitution of grace itself, the only 
form in which the powers of the new creation are at work in the 
world ; while all beyond resolves itself into that mere life of nature, 
from the weakness and curse of which it is the object of the Gospel 
to set men free? To say that no such intervention is needed, to 
make room for the course of the Christian sanation, is virtually to 
deny and reject the truth of all that has now been said concerning 
the difference between the order of nature and the order of grace, 
and to hold that men may be saved absolutely in the order of nature 
itself without any order of grace at all; which is such an error 
again, as necessarily involves at last, when carried out to its 
legitimate end, the denial and rejection of the whole mystery 
of the Incarnation. If the grace by which salvation is made 
possible be in the world only as a supernatural system, flowing 
from Christ, and if this system be itself the Church, related to 
Him as the body to the head, it follows forthwith that there can 
be no ordinary salvation out of the Church; that it is the first 
duty of all to seek refuge in its bosom from the wrath to come ; 
and that those who do so are at once made to have part in such 
full power and possibility of being saved as may be said to be in 
fact salvation already begun. So much, accordingly, is involved 
every where for St. Paul, in his established idea of the Church. 
He has no difficulty whatever in assuming continually, that it sus- 
tains to the world a relation corresponding in full with all that the 
Ark was, in the days of Noah, to the men of his generation. 

Apprehended as it is by St. Paul again, the Church has neces- 
sarily an objective organic life. It is in this respect a system or 
constitution parallel in full with the constitution of the world, 
under its simply natural form. It is made up of manifold forces 
and powers, working with a vast array of outward historical re- 
sults, through successive ages, which are yet all bound together 
as one general movement, and capable of being referred to a com- 
mon principle or source. That principle is Christ. The Church 
starts from Him, and stands in Him always, as its perennial undy- 



582 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ing root. Whatever of grace, power, opportunity and possibility, 
there may be in it, as distinguished from the universal range 
of man's life on the outside of it, all proceeds from the new order 
of existence which was introduced into the world by His Incar- 
nation, and in virtue of which He now reigns at the right hand 
of God. It is a sphere of being, which refers itself back organically 
to the principle of the new creation in such view, even as the sphere 
of nature, with all its powers and possibilities, refers itself back or- 
ganically also to the principle of the old creation, advanced to its 
highest form in the "living soul " of Adam. 

Such in general is St. Paul's conception of the Church. It unites 
in itself at once the two sides of the peculiar and truly enigmatical 
hypothesis, on which we have found all his Epistles to be con- 
structed ; doing full justice to both, and causing their seeming con- 
tradictoriness to disappear ; for which very reason also it offers to 
us the only satisfactory solution of their sense, the only key by 
which it is possible to expound them in an} 7 full and harmonious 
way. 

It is easy to see, that no like idea of the Church is at all attain- 
able for either of the onesided tendencies, which allow themselves, 
as we have seen before, to turn the true synthesis of the Christian 
mystery into a false antithesis, by separating its factors, and then 
exalting one at the sore cost and sacrifice of the other. It is very 
certain, on the contrary, that these schemes must lead necessarily, 
each in its own way, to a different notion of the Church altogether; 
and it is very certain, moreover, beforehand, that no such different 
notion can ever be made to square exegetically with the true mean- 
ing of St. Paul's Epistles, but must serve rather to involve the ex- 
position of them in endless and hopeless embarrassment. 

Neither the Arminian nor the Calvinistic extremes can make 
true earnest with the proper objective and historical character of 
the Church, regarded as a constitution of grace in distinction from 
the constitution of nature. Neither of them can do justice to the 
idea of its organic nature, the unity and continuity of its being, 
considered as the power of a new creation in Christ Jesus. With 
neither of them can it ever come to a true acknowledgment of the 
position which properly belongs to it in the supernatural economy 
of salvation, as a part of the "nvvstery of godliness," itself a nrys- 
tery, and in such view fairly and of right an object of faith, as it is 
made to be in the Apostles' Creed. For neither of them is the 
Church, in any sense, what the Ark was in the time of Noah, the 
bearer actually of the redemption which it offers to those who are 



Chap. XLIV] hodge on tpie ephestans 583 

invited into its bosom, the very organ and medium of grace, the 
home of the Spirit, the sphere of celestial powers, through whose 
intervention alone the blessings of the Gospel are made to be avail- 
able and possible truly for any of the children of men. Both 
schemes are careful in fact to denounce the idea of all such inter- 
position and mediation in any form, as interfering with what they 
take to be the proper freeness and directness of Divine grace, and 
as tending in their apprehension to rob religion of that character 
of inwardness and spirituality, which forms its highest distinction, 
and which it is held to admit only in the form of an immediate 
personal transaction between every man and his Maker. 

Looking at the Abrahamic constitution in its true light, we have 
before us here, in fact, two altogether different forms of election. 
We may distinguish them as mechanical and organic. The scheme 
set before us by Dr. Hodge is strictly of the first character; the 
reigning Biblical scheme is altogether of the last. The difference 
between the two conceptions is so important, that we may well be 
at some pains to have it clearly in mind. 

If a man should suppose a law in nature to be of one measure 
exactly with its phenomenal results, the numerical comprehension 
of these and nothing more, a mere term to express and set forth 
the general truth of their existence as so many separate facts, it 
would be an example of a mechanical notion coming short entirely 
of the real nature of its object. The case calls for an organic con- 
ception. Such a law is not the product merely of its own results 
(a contradiction in terms), nor yet an instrument simply for bring- 
ing them to pass; but the very power itself of their existence. 

To bring the matter nearer to the case in hand, take now the 
common relation of a tree to its branches, blossoms and fruit. If 
these should be supposed to exist in any certain quantity and form 
aside from the tree itself, and there to be joined to it in an outward 
way, causing it to appear as the instrumental bond and bearer of 
their collective life, the conception would be again purely mechan- 
ical ; whereas the actually existing relation itself, as all may easily 
see, is organic; the tree being in fact the true ground and founda- 
tion of all the life that is comprehended in its branches, blossoms, 
and fruit; to such extent, that they cannot exist at all, nor be so 
'much as conceived even to exist, except through its presence and 
power. 

Make such a case, in the next place, the object of God's decree; 
which must be considered in truth to extend to all His works ; and 
we may readily see how there is room here again for the same differ- 



584 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

ence of conception, accordingly as the decree ma} T be taken to agree 
with one or the other of these views. What the tree is really, it 
must be considered in any right view to be ideally also in God's 
eternal purpose and plan. The order of its being, in both modes, 
must be intrinsically the same. The decree looks to the branches, 
blossoms, and fruit, only through the tree, which forms the whole 
ground of their being and life. They are viewed as being in fact a 
single constitution. To will their existence, is to will, not second- 
arily but primarily, the existence of the tree itself. In such sense 
only, may the}" be said to be chosen in it to what is at last their 
actual destination. The election, by which this is secured, is 
organic. Dr. Hodge, however, to be consistent with his own theo- 
logical theory, would need to reverse the order of the conception 
altogether. The branches, the blossoms, the fruit, are to be con- 
sidered as all predetermined to their existence in time, in the first 
place, just so many, neither more nor less ; and then, next in order, 
and for the purpose of bringing this to pass, must be supposed to 
follow the preordination of the tree, fitted and contrived to serve 
as an instrumental medium for reaching the end in view. This is 
the mechanical notion of election. The two schemes, in this case, 
may be distinguished without any great difficult}"; and it is by no 
means hard to say, which of them is entitled to the most respect. 

All proceeds from God's eternal purpose or decree; and we may 
say of men universally, that they have been chosen in Adam before 
the foundation of the world, to become what they are actually after- 
wards in time. It makes all the difference in the world, however, 
in what sense this election may be taken. Conceive of it under the 
mechanical character which Dr. Hodge assigns to the corresponding 
election of grace, and it must be held to mean, that the decree starts 
with the purpose of calling into actual existence, under a human 
form, a distinctly settled number of possible beings, irrespectively 
altogether of any intervening condition, and then falls upon the 
expedient or device of making the whole process centre in Aclam, 
as it does now in fact; a view that is not likely to be entertained 
seriously here, we think, even by Dr. Hodge himself. The organic 
conception alone falls in rationally with the demands of the case. 
So apprehended, the decree coincides with what we are irresistibly 
constrained to regard as the world's actual constitution. The re- 
lation of Adam to men generally is seen to be an organic law; 
through the presence and power of which alone they come to be 
what the}" are; and aside from which, therefore, there is no room 
really to conceive of their existence at all. To be the object of 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 585 

God's purpose then in any way whatever, they must be regarded 
by it from eternity in this form and no other. The Divine decree 
terminates on the whole race immediately and at once, as a consti- 
tution derived from Adam, and holding in him continually as its 
natural root. 

In the first place, this metaphysical view of foreordination, as it 
may be supposed to lie back of all organization, deciding and fixing 
in every case its precise contents and results, is not the view of St. 
Paul presented to us in the Epistle to the Ephesians. We do not 
say that it is one which he was not prepared to understand or ac- 
knowledge, in its proper place. That is another question. What 
we mean is, that it was not in his mind at all, not present to his 
thoughts in any way, in writing this Epistle; and that it cannot be 
used, therefore, as a true key to its sense. 

In the next place, the conception in question does not offer itself 
as one that is peculiar in any way to the sphere of religion. It 
looks to the universal constitution of the world. So far as it goes, 
the order of grace is viewed as being the real counterpart and par- 
allel of the order of nature. That is just what it is made to be in 
the thinking of St. Paul. The one is to him, as really as the other, 
an objective constitution, having in itself its own laws and powers, 
and working organically for the accomplishment of its own ends. 
With what may be supposed to lie behind all this in either case, 
the metaphysical conception of the Divine decree, he does not allow 
his mind to concern itself in any way whatever. 

In the last place, it makes a vast difference, whether this meta- 
physical conception be allowed to form directly one notion of elec- 
tion as in the mechanical scheme, or be simply thrown as an impen- 
etrable mystery behind it, according to the organic view. In the 
first case, it becomes absolutely unconditional, having regard to no 
conceivable relations or qualities whatever; as being itself neces- 
sarily the ground and reason of all such distinction ; in which view, 
we can think of nothing more perfectly abstract. In the other 
case, it is at once conditional ; eyeing all existences from eternity 
as they actually are in time; seeing the whole always in its parts, 
and the parts in their whole, as well as in the relations they bear 
mutually among themselves; determining and fixing things con- 
cretely ; the only way that can be said to answer truly at last to 
their being; the only way, indeed, in which the}^ can ever be really 
and truly the object of either purpose or thought at all. 

Such is St. Paul's idea of election, we repeat, as applied to the 
econonry of the Christian Church. It is not mechanical, but or- 
37 



586 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

game; not abstract, but concrete. It has to do with men. not in 
the general view simply of their common natural humanity, but 
under the conception of their being Christians, such as have come 
to stand, through the obedience of faith, in the bosom of the new 
order of life which is revealed in the Church: without any reference 
immediately to the way in which this may be supposed to have 
come to pass. "What the Apostle has immediately in his eye. is not 
so much the election of men into Christ, as their election in Him; 
the heavenly prerogatives, the glorious privileges, possibilities, op- 
portunities and powers, that are comprehended in the new creation 
of which He is the Alpha and Omega, and to which they are chosen 
in fact by being embraced in its organic sphere. Just as. by being 
in the vine, its branches may be said to be elected and chosen in it 
to all the fruitfulness. which is made possible for them in this way. 
and in this way alone. 

The grand object of the whole purpose is primarily and funda- 
mentally the Lord Jesus Christ himself. All else is seen as having 
place only in Him and by Him. TThat fills the soul of the Apostle 
with adoring admiration, is the thought of the glorious constitution 
of grace in His person, considered as present to the mind of God 
from all eternity, and as forming in truth the ultimate scope of all 
His counsels and dispensations towards the human race, though in 
the unsearchable depths of His wisdom it was not allowed for ages 
to come fully into view. Through all the graces of nature, made 
subject to vanity by reason of sin. its gloomy forebodings, and wild 
utterances of despair; through the long night of expectation that 
went before the Flood and followed after it ; through the clouds and 
darkness, which shrouded the mysterious- presence of Jehovah dur- 
ing the whole period of the Old Testament: this was the end. to- 
wards whose revelation, in the fulness of time, the universal plan of 
the world had been directed from the beginning, and in the advent 
-of which alone was to be reached finally the full resolution of its in- 
most sense. All looked in this way to the new constitution which 
was to be ushered into the world by the glorious fact of the Incarna- 
tion, carrying with it redemption and victory over the powers of sin 
and hell, for all who should come into its bosom, and use faithfully 
its grace. And now God's eternal purpose was fulfilled. The mys- 
tery of ages was no longer hid. but open. Christ had come in the 
flesh: and by His death and resurrection room was made for the 
Church, which now stood among men. accordingly, and was destined 
to do so to the end of time, as the comprehension of the unutterable 
blessings which had been procured for the world by His mediation. 



Chap. XLIY] hodge on the ephesians 587 

The two schemes before us, as they involve totally different con- 
ceptions of the Church, lead also to materially different notions of 
faith. With St. Paul, the Church, regarded as a real constitution 
of grace in the world, through which only the resources of Christ's 
resurrection life are made available for the purposes of man's " de- 
liverance from this present evil world" (Gal. 1 : 4), is of course at 
once an object for faith, as really as Christ's resurrection itself. It 
is a constituent part of Christianity, answering truly to the posi- 
tion which is assigned to it under such view in the primitive 
Creeds. It is no abstraction, no mere generalization, resolving it- 
self at last into the mental notion by which it is apprehended ; but 
in some form the objective presence of a true concrete fact, whose 
authority men are required to own in an outward practical way, as 
well as with the inward homage of the spirit. This practical ac- 
knowledgment forms thus an important part of the true idea of the 
Christian faith ; nay, we may say, it is the very form in which all 
such faith necessarily begins. For if there he any constitution of 
this sort really in the world, the first duty of all men must be 
plainly to acknowledge its supernatural claims, and to place them- 
selves within its bosom, in order that they may be saved ; and it 
can never be anything better than folly for them to talk of believ- 
ing and obeying the Gospel at other points, while they refuse to 
comply here with that requirement, which in the very nature of the 
case must be taken to underlie and condition all requirements be- 
sides, as offering the only way in which it is possible for them to 
be fulfilled ; just as it would have been the folly of madness itself, 
for any in the time of the Flood to have professed faith in the Ark, 
and firm trust in its offers of grace, whilst they continued obsti- 
nately to stay on the outside of its walls. In this light, the sense 
of the Apostolical commission becomes plain. 

Many thoughts, well worthy of attention, offer themselves here 
for consideration, growing out of the general subject of our dis- 
cussion, and bearing on the doctrine of the Church, which, how- 
ever, it would carry us altogether too far to notice now in any sort 
of detail. If we have succeeded at all, in bringing into view the 
form in which this great doctrine was held by St. Paul, and the 
place it occupies in his writings, it must be at once plain that it is 
not easy to lay too much stress upon the significance which prop- 
erly belongs to it in the Christian system. It is found to take its 
position at once very near the centre, and not simply in the out- 
ward circumference, of the general scheme of salvation ; in a way 
which answers exactly to the order of the Creed, and serves to jus- 



588 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1853-1861 [DlV. X 

tify in full also the method or plan of its construction. The very 
first object of faith, following the mission of the Holy Ghost, must 
be in the nature of the case (if Christianity be no mere abstrac- 
tion, and no modification simply of the life of nature, but really 
and truly a new order of existence in the sense of St. Paul), just 
what it is made to be in the Creed. Not the Bible, but the Church; 
not any particular doctrine, such as human depravity, for instance, 
or the atonement, but the fundamental fact of Christianity itself, 
on the ground of which only it is possible to hold any doctrine 
whatever with true Christian faith. The argument for the Church, 
in this view, is very broad. It lies in the organic structure of 
Christianity itself. Once fairly apprehended, as we have it in the 
Creed, this is found to involve the article as a necessary part of its 
general conception or scheme. 

We may say, indeed, that the article of the Church forms the 
very keystone of the grand and glorious arch, with which the mys- 
tery of the new creation is represented in the Creed to span the 
chasm, otherwise impassable, which separates between earth and 
heaven, creating thus a wa}' for the ransomed of the Lord to pass 
over. Onl3 T to suppose it gone, is to turn the arch itself into a 
Gnostic vision. The argument for the Church, we say, is compre- 
hended mainty in the organic constitution of Christianity itself; 
and this is the form precisely, in which it is made to challenge our 
faith, and our obedient regard in the New Testament. The doc- 
trine of the Church is in the New Testament just as the other ar- 
ticles of the Christian faith are there ; not so much in the way of 
single naked texts, as under the general and broader view of neces- 
sary comprehension in the Christian S3 T stem regarded as a whole. 

That is a most lean use of the Scriptures at best, which affects 
to keep itself in any case to isolated texts, and overlooks the 
vastly more important significance of what lies in the organic rela- 
tions of the facts themselves, with which the whole revelation is 
concerned. What are the few testimonies which assert in an im- 
mediate and direct way the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine 
of the Saviour's Divinity, in comparison with the vast body of evi- 
dence for both, which is involved in the representations and as- 
sumptions of the Gospel in its universal view ? They underlie in 
fact the whole thinking of the New Testament, the entire universe 
of its gracious revelations, just as they are made to bear up the 
whole structure of the Creed. 

And so it is with this article of the Church. There are single 
and separate texts which may be quoted, in proof of its being, its 



Chap. XLIV] hodge on the ephesians 589 

attributes, and its claims to regard; more than we are able to pro- 
duce in such form for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; more than 
we have for the inspiration and divine authority of the Sacred 
Scriptures. But it would be a great mistake to think that the 
Scriptural argument for the article lies wholly, or mainly, in any 
such passages. The true force of this argument comes into view, 
only when we are brought to see how the truth of the article is 
everywhere assumed and taken for granted in the New Testament, 
as something necessarily involved in the very constitution of 
Christianity, and as little to be separated from the conception of 
the mystery in any case, as form from substance, or body from soul. 
Of this we have a broad and striking example in this Epistle of 
St. Paul to the Ephesians. Strong testimonies occur in it for the 
doctrine of the Church, in the direct textual form ; testimonies that 
may well embarrass the Puritan mind, so utterly foreign are they 
from its whole habit of thought. But these texts are, after all, 
only a small fraction of the evidence, which is really contained in 
the Epistle for the doctrine in question. That is found, not so 
much in what the Apostle directly asserts on the subject, as in 
what he presumes to be true of it, from the salutation with which 
his Epistle begins to the benediction that brings it to a close. 

The idea of the Church runs as a silent hypothesis, or underlying 
assumption, through all his teachings and exhortations. It may 
be said to be fairly woven into his whole scheme of religion. All 
that he says is conditioned and ruled continually by the thought, 
that those whom he addresses stood not in the general world, but 
in the bosom of the Church; and that their position in this view 
served to place them actually, and not by figure of speech only, in 
correspondence with the powers of a higher world, under such form 
as was not possible elsewhere, while it was sufficient here to justify 
in full the strongest language he employs in regard to their privi- 
leges and hopes. This is in fact a constant practical recognition 
of the article in question, as it stands in the Creed; and a recogni- 
tion of it also under the same general view, as being not simply an 
arrangement added to Christianity from without, but a true organic 
part of its actual substance and proper heavenly constitution, 
making it to be fairhv and of right an object, not of opinion merely 
but of faith, for all men in all ages of the world. 



XI-AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 

ML 58-73 



CHAPTER XLY 



A FTER Dr. Xevin had lived eight years more or less in retire- 
-£j- ment from official duties, bis seclusion seemed to become 
somewhat irksome to him, and his faithful companion seemed to 
understand what he needed better than he perhaps did himself. He 
had spent inauy } T ears in academic life, and that was something in 
his case as conducive and necessary to health as physical exercise 
on the farm. The College was near by, and why should his talent 
for instructing 3 T oung men not be called into requisition in the in- 
stitution as in former years? — One of the College professors met 
Mrs. Nevin one morning at market, and inquired of her how the 
Doctor was getting along on the farm. She said not very well; 
there seemed to be something the matter with him ; but thought 
that, if he could have some regular intellectual work to perform, it 
would be better for him, inquiring whether room might not be made 
for him to teach for a part of his time in the College. She was as- 
sured that such an arrangement was quite possible, and that the 
Faculty would no doubt be glad to welcome him back again as one 
of their colleagues. So it turned out, and the Facult}^ soon after- 
wards requested him to take part in the instructions of the College, 
more particularly in the department of histor}^ ; and the Trustees at 
their annual meeting in 1862 approved of the arrangement. He 
held this position of Lecturer from 1861 to 1866. Professor Koep- 
pen had just been compelled to withdraw from his post as Pro- 
fessor of History, because the funds in the Treasury were not ade- 
quate to pay him his salary any longer ; and the friends of the Col- 
lege agreed to contribute a nominal salaiy for Dr. Nevin for several 
years if necessarj-, in order that he might make up for the loss in 
the vacant professorship. History had been receiving increased at- 
tention in the College, but it was felt that it embraced something 
more than what is usually taught in the text-books. To supple- 
ment the course of historical study, therefore, Dr. Nevin concluded 
to deliver several lectures weekly, on the Philosoplry or Science of 

(590) 



Chap. XLV] lectures on history 591 

History, for which he was eminently qualified. These were en- 
larged from year to year, and from the notes of these lectures, taken 
down by one of the students, we here give their substance or gen- 
eral drift. 

History has for its object the process of the general life of man. 
It belongs to the sphere of humanity, which is the sphere of reason. 
Intelligence, Reason, and Freedom are activities that spring from 
themselves and not from' blind instinct. This free action we find 
first in the case of the individual and then in that of the race. This 
is something strictly human. The movements of history differ 
from those of nature in that they do not return to their own begin- 
nings; they alwaj^s tend upwards, while those of nature recur in a 
regular cycle. The animal never rises above its own order, but in 
the case of the moral and historical world the progress is always from 
a lower to a higher stadium. We cannot say, therefore, that there 
is any history in the lives of animals or plants, and the term Nat- 
ural History is a term that can be properly used only in the way 
of accommodation. History proper implies the progress of natural 
life or its record, and in that view has a law and end of its own, as 
a life above and beyond nature, or the limitations set to mere ani- 
mal or vegetable life. 

History manifests itself in the progress of the individual, of the 
nation, and of the race as a whole. Biography is the narrowest 
view that can be taken of history. But the life of an}^ single man 
can never be isolated nor be truthfully described unless the exist- 
ing state of society is also taken into consideration. To under- 
stand him properly, therefore, we must understand the history of 
society in the times in which he lived. In general, therefore, it is 
the representative men of the epochs in the histo^ of the world, who 
are held up as studies for the biographer. As a single individual 
may thus stand for the history of his age, this kind of a biography 
is called a monograph. Such we have of Luther, Mohammed and 
Napoleon, with whose lives the history of their times are so inti- 
mately connected that the one cannot be written without embracing 
the other. Thus, biography becomes truly historical; but when 
thus considered, it becomes a very difficult species of composition. 

The life of a nation is different from that of individuals. Com- 
mon nationality is a mode of existence, distinctive from personal 
existence. Under this view, it is a body of people bound together 
by common interest and a movement towards a common end. The 
foundation of its life is a plrvsical substratum, depending upon the 



592 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

influences of geographical features, such as climate, atmosphere and 
so on. But the development of man is a moral as well as a physical 
growth, and his moral and invisible substance or substratum is of 
more importance than all the external improvement which a nation 
receives from external influences. Now the idea of national history 
is presented to us in this national life, which is a movement that 
rises and extends itself through its individual members. Like the 
histoiy of the individual, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, 
but unlike the natural world it does not repeat itself in a C} 7 cle. 
~No nation can repeat the life of another; each has a life of its own 
and its own problem to solve; but both the individual and the 
national life come to an end; both rise, progress, exhaust themselves, 
decay, fall, and in their turn pass away. Histoiy, however, presents 
itself to us also in a complete or universal sense. 

To do justice to individual or national histoiy, both must be re- 
garded as connected with universal or world histoiy. This is not 
the sum of the one or the other, or of the two combined. It has also 
a life of its own, in which the others are comprehended as the indi- 
vidual and particular in the universal. — There are two kinds of uni- 
versality. One of these we reach by bringing individuals together 
and employing a single thought to comprehend them in a single or 
common term, which constitutes a generality that is abstract. The 
other does not depend upon individual things, for when we come to 
penetrate them by thought, we find that they stand for something 
that lies beneath and back of them. Thus the universal ever meets 
us as our minds penetrate through tangible objects to that which 
lies behind. This is the true idea of universality, a concretion as 
opposed to an abstraction. The sense of this joined to the abstract 
sense is part and parcel of the general thing or reality itself as per- 
ceived by the mind. Hence we call it a combined generality in dis- 
tinction from one that is abstract. The difference here between the 
two generalities is that the one is abstract and the other organic. 

History thus coming before us as a whole or a totality is Uni- 
versal or World History. In this character it is not the sum or 
mere aggregation of individual history, but a totality including a 
movement which has in it a law, tending towards a particular end. 
So all history as being the representation of the life of man is or- 
ganic. This implies that there is a vital principle active in it from 
beginning to end. The development must, therefore, be subject to 
some law, which binds all the parts together into a single whole, 
always tending towards some definite end or result. There must 
therefore be unity here as in all other organisms. The apparent 



Chap. XLY] lectures on history 593 

discords and disorder in history do not necessarily contradict what 
is thus affirmed. We must believe that there is order here amidst 
what seems to be endless confusion, or deny that man possesses 
rationalit}'. To suppose that there is order in nature, and yet to 
doubt that it obtains in history, is infidel and foolish. 

The idea of World History as no barren abstraction must be 
regarded as a postulate, which we are obliged to admit to our rea- 
son. As such the world as a whole has a meaning, a rise, a prog- 
ress and an end, controlled throughout by the presence of law. 
Hence when we speak of the Science of History we mean Univer- 
sal History. 

It has been a question whether we should begin at World His- 
tory and then descend to that of nations and individuals, or pursue 
the reverse course. Both of these methods have been adopted. 
The latter is abstract and fails to bring the mind to a proper con- 
ception of an organism ; the former, however, may lead to such a 
determination. Hegel and others begin at the whole and thus at- 
tempt to construct a philosophy of history. This is an ideal 
scheme, in accordance with which history is required to proceed 
and then descend to that of nations and individuals. But we can- 
not separate the universal from the particular. The true idea of 
science requires generally that the two should be united and pro- 
ceed together. And so it should be in the treatment of history. 

In speaking of history thus far, the word has been used in its 
most general sense, as denoting the movement of humanity in the 
life of man. When, however, we have to do with it as a science, 
we must accustom ourselves to the distinction which is involved in 
its name as a science. It is used without the distinction of matter 
and form in our own minds. History is objective in one view — 
Res gestae — and subjective in another — written history. In the one 
case it is the actual progress or movement of humanity as a whole, 
as something objective to the human mind; in the other case, it is 
to be understood as the knowledge of this movement, or the image 
of it as it is reflected upon our minds. This latter, subjective his- 
tory exists of course only in the knowledge or thought of man, and 
as such is written out, and becomes, as it were, the tradition of his- 
tory, sometimes called historiography. Thus history in the one case 
is confined to the sense of the movement, whilst in the other it is 
the representation or record of it as handed down from one genera- 
tion to another. 

History is thus general, particular and individual, but before it 
is studied under any one of these aspects, certain propositions must 



594 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

be previously admitted as true, else it is void of light and presents 
an insolvable riddle. It must be a system complete in itself; it 
must include order, law, unity and an ultimate sense or meaning; 
it cannot be the result of chance, or be regarded as chaotic in any 
sense; it is a system that has a rational constitution ; we have in it 
the presence of intelligence, which does awa} T with the idea of a 
blind necessity; and, in studying histoiy, we must consequently 
believe in the presence of law and order working towards a rational 
end. In a word, we must believe that God is in histoiy as well as 
man and the devil. Such ideas are not reached by induction, but 
come from the moral world, which is the world of mind. 

Whilst history or humanity in an historical form is thus a unity, 
it is not by any means absoluteh' simple, but presents itself in a 
complex character or variety of phases, that call for classification 
or distinction. The action which results from this complex charac- 
ter of human life is divided into two parts, chronologicalhr, and 
sjmchronistically or simultaneous action. Under the latter view 
eveiy individual man in proportion to his contents includes in him- 
self different spheres, such as science, art or religion ; and so likewise 
in the case of national life there are spheres common to a nation as 
a whole, which progress together. The same is true of humanity 
as a whole; it in like manner breaks up into different spheres, which, 
although separate, nevertheless hold together. These are not sta- 
tionaiy, but have a movement corresponding with the more general 
movement that is constantly going forward. Each sphere ma}' 
thus be made the subject of an individual histoiy as in the divine 
counsel of redemption, in the life of Christ as given in the Creed, 
or the histoiy of Christianity. In this view histoiy, which rests 
on the manifold spheres of life, becomes very complex; but it must 
be remembered that these spheres are bound to each other synchro- 
nistically, and cannot be studied with advantage independently of 
each other. Each sphere forms as it were a stream; each stream 
is confined to its channel; all rest upon a fundamental movement 
or law; and this gives rise to the Philosoply of Histoiy, or the 
Science of the Idea as it underlies the movement of the life of the 
individual, of the nation and of the world, penetrating as it does 
every single or individual sphere. This idea of course is not sta- 
tionary, but moves and changes its character from time to time, 
and with it these spheres also move. Accordingly, while we see and 
acknowledge a movement in each sphere, we must also see that the}' 
cannot move otherwise than as they are determined b}- their funda- 
mental idea, or that which underlies the histoiy of the world itself. 



Chap. XLY] lectures on history 595 

They belong to their own individual nations and times, and as they 
pass away it is impossible to resuscitate them. That which is past 
is past and cannot be recalled. 

There is, however, another view of the movement of human life, 
and this is the chronological. Here it is not a cycle, but a progress 
going forward age after age. It is, of course, not uniform, but may 
be broken up into parts. The division of the study of history into 
spheres may be compared to parallel lines, whilst that which is 
simply chronological consists of stages of progression in the gen- 
eral direction of a straight line. The movement, however, is not 
always continuous. It resembles that of a human being from child- 
hood to youth, from youth to manhood, and from manhood to old 
age. There may be in it at times abrupt interruptions, like a 
stream falling from one level to another, but with this difference, 
that whilst the stream falls from one stage to another, history, on 
the other hand, rises from one plane to another. — Life is thus 
divided into stages, and what is true of individual history is also 
true of what is national. There are changes which arise that seem 
to shake or change the destinies of nations. These are called rev- 
olutions, which elevate the national life from one level to another. 
Thus, too, the history of the world does not always proceed in a 
uniform course; it alters its general plane, but always tending up- 
wards from one to another, in which each one is higher than the 
preceding. But with this change of base there is also a change of 
theatre on which the movement proceeds. 

In the individual or national life, the movement proceeding on 
the same theatre, solves only the problem whose solution leads to 
the solution of another and higher one. When this is accomplished 
in the case of a nation, it is dropped or disappears almost, if not en- 
tirely, from the general solution of the world's problem. It has 
acted its part and then passes behind the curtain. Beginning in 
the Orient the progress advanced westward. Greek and Roman 
civilization, the migration of nations, the rise of German civiliza- 
tion, France, Italy, England and America, are but the stages in the 
solution of one and the same great question. In all this we observe 
simply successive stages in the same grand march of history. 

The convulsions attending this onward movement are properly 
denominated crises, because they decide some point at issue where, 
for a time, destructive and conservative forces meet each other in 
fierce conflict ; and, whether the point in dispute be settled in cab- 
inets or on the battle-field, they do not go backwards. This is a 
postulate or universal law in which our faith requires us to believe. 



596 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Here we meet with epochs and eras. The former marks the break 
where the era begins. Thus the Christian era is the period since 
the birth of Christ, which is the grandest of all epochs in histoiy. 

The sense of Universal Histoiy, as a whole, is one, but it com- 
prises at the same time different problems that must be solved sep- 
arately. Each nation has a purpose in histor}^ or a share in bring- 
ing about the grand result. It rims its course and then perishes, 
but the results it has reached live, and are carried forward in an- 
other channel by a new nation, which in its turn also perishes but 
sends the result of its life still farther onward. In this diversity 
of national factors there is, however, one central stream, which 
changes its channel and level at each step of the solution which it 
takes. It is not confined to any single national^ nor within the 
same geographical boundaries. 

This movement is a rational one, subject to law, and never at 
the mercy of mere chance, else we could have no faith in it. It is 
continually evolving changes, and sometimes it seems to turn back- 
ward; for having solved one problem, it must as it were go back 
and take up new forces which have not as } T et been developed. This 
retrograde movement is a preparation for that which follows. The 
beginning of a stage or era is alwa}^s an apparent retrograde. 

The rationality of history is a postulate of our reason, and of 
our religious reason in particular. The study of it must be di- 
rected towards a proper apprehension of its law and its truth, with- 
out which we must ever occup}^ a wrong stand-point, and look upon 
the whole process without seeing in it the harmom T of its parts. 
Here Hegel erred. He attempted too much on the strength of 
mere reason. We can understand the S3 r stem of nature below us ; 
we can see that the world is, as it were, a theatre in which man 
acts ; we can see that there is a law which runs through it up to 
man, and we can see that man is the key to this law. But it has 
not been proved that we are capable of determining the life of the 
world b}^ simply studying the life of man. In presuming to do 
that Hegel was too venturesome. It has never been found possible 
in this way to discern the chief end of man, nor to find a key to 
explain it. The efforts or failures to do this have only tended to 
show that this end lies bej^ond this life and the present world. 

It has been supposed that this ke} T is to be found in the political 
and scientific life of man, but it has been proved to be unsatisfac- 
toiy; and we are therefore compelled to admit that man's chief end 
lies be} T ond the present life and order of things. Here religion 
comes in to our aid and throws its light on the dark problem. This 



Chap. XLY] lectures on history 597 

being the supreme object of life, it must underlie the entire order 
of the world, running through both the natural and mental. We 
have an example of this in Jewish history. We cannot conceive of 
their separation from the rest of mankind, unless it was for the 
benefit of humanity at large, and so we find it. 

Under this view, then, the grand sense of the world comes out in 
the Christian revelation, and Christ must be regarded as the key 
that unlocks the mystery of human existence. Christianity must, 
accordingly, be considered as carrying along with it the central 
current of the world's life, whilst all other currents are only subor- 
dinate. We must not be deterred by the difficulty of comprehend- 
ing the sense of much that is embraced in history, both before and 
since the time of Christ; but we must admit that it exists or else 
doubt Christianity itself as a fact. Jesus Christ must be the foun- 
dation of our life, and the main stream of history must be in the 
Christian Church. Every other belief is of the essence of infidelit} 7 . 
The law of history, therefore, tends towards Christianity, of which 
Christ is the principle or life, and it is only as we apprehend it 
in this way that we can prosecute the study of it with any proper 
degree of comfort or success. 

History is objective when it is spoken of as an object of stucty, 
and subjective when we speak of our knowledge of it. As a matter 
of study it supplies a variety of sources or resources from which 
historical knowledge is acquired, such as tradition in its widest 
sense, monuments, inscriptions, ruined cities and so forth. But 
the knowledge of history, either for the student or the historian, 
depends not simply upon such outward helps, but still more so upon 
certain internal qualifications on the part of the historian or student, 
without which the mere material of history would be of little ac- 
count, the objective and the subjective being " useless each without 
the other." 

Learning, thorough and exhaustive, is indispensable and the 
primar} 7 resource of the historian, but not this without other quali- 
fications however great. This can bring together a vast pile of 
materials but it cannot construct a house or a palace. Faith and 
imagination are needed to reduce the crude material into a picture 
or counterpart of the true historical movement, as something that 
possesses in it a life truly organic. • 

We must believe that the divine presence is ever active in the 
world; that the physical is only the substratum, upon which the 
moral order rests ; that God is ever directing the world of man to- 
wards its proper end, always in harmony with human freedom, 



598 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

which, however, can never set aside the divine plan or law. In the 
whole process we witness a human factor, but at the same time 
there is also a divine factor which rules and directs towards one re- 
sult. — This faith, in the first place, is a belief in the being and 
presence of God; then that His will has been made known to us 
through a divine revelation ; and that this revelation completes it- 
self in Christianity, which alone reveals the Divine presence. With- 
out the light that shines forth from the person of Christ both nature 
and history are involved in gross darkness ; with its help the divine 
plan and purpose become manifest. But Christianity is more than 
a light ; it is also a power in histoiy, greater than all others, whether 
friendly or unfriendly to it. This is involved in faith, and must be 
admitted as a postulate of common seuse by all who believe in the 
Bible. It is only, therefore, as we recognize a supernatural element 
as having entered the bosom of history, are we in a condition to 
write, stucty or understand it. 

Christ is the central fact, from which all other historical facts 
derive their significance. He is the key that unlocks its mysteries 
and apparent contradictions. All history previous to His Advent 
was preparatory to this grand Epoch, and what has followed since 
is the completion. 

This view then furnished a necessary stand-point, from which all 
historical observations are to be made. Learning is a necessary 
and powerful agent, but in itself inadequate to enter into the mean- 
ing and bearings of historical data. In truth much learning here 
without faith only serves to uncover confusion and to render the 
darkness still more visible. — As in the plrvsical so in the moral 
world, we must occupy a position from which the entire field may 
be surve} T ed, and that must be the right one, central and command- 
ing. Otherwise the observer is in danger of being influenced by 
his own subjective opinions, political or religious. This being the 
case, we see that there is room for distrusting a large amount of 
what goes under the name of history. 

The works of ancient historians rest upon the assumption of a 
divine power in all historical movements. They proceeded from a 
safer stand-point than that of modern writers who have no faith in 
the Bible. On this account some of these old writers are entitled 
to high respect, although they are not safe guides in the study of 
World History. Among so called Christian historians many under 
this view are unworthy of our confidence. — There is the same ten- 
dency among modern writers as that which prevails with those 
who stucby the natural world, to fix their minds upon the laws of 



Chap. XLV] lectures on history 599 

nature and think that the economy of the whole world may be re- 
duced to similar or merely natural laws. Thus they in fact pro- 
mote the interests of the cause of infidelity. Many historians, 
therefore, as well as natural philosophers are destitute of both piety 
and faith. Gribbon and Hume, both men of great historical learn- 
ing and ability, having no faith in Christianity, labor therefore 
under the serious defect of viewing the periods they describe from 
a wrong stand-point. Their works are dangerous, not from the di- 
rect attacks which the}^ make upon Christianity, but from their 
reigning spirit. 

Christianity is more or less brought into contact and conflict 
with the various interests which make up our political and social 
life. The Church is one order and the State another, and the two 
frequently come in conflict. The religious movement may be em- 
barrassed or corrupted by human passion or interest, so that all 
which may be clone in the name of religion may not be right. But 
the proper idea of Christianity requires that we should believe 
that in a general way Christianity has the truth on its side ; and in 
looking at the course of human life we must believe that the right 
is represented by the Church, at least until the contraiy is proved. 
This belief of the historian is not and should not be mere blind 
devotion to the Church as the divine factor in history. 

But the historian needs imagination as well as faith and learning. 
This faculty is in general a power which reproduces circumstances 
by an insight into their constitution. It differs from memory, 
which onbr brings up past facts, in that it reconstructs the facts. 
It is, therefore, not necessary to know all the facts in a given case, 
as they may not at all times be accessible ; it is only necessary to 
have enough to enable the historian to get at the principle or 
ground of the facts. Then by the power of his imagination he 
can restore them to their original order. Memory cannot supple- 
ment anything ; imagination can, in a measure, fill out the missing 
links and connections, and is consequently the faculty of repro- 
duction, creative, as it were, causing the object to be presented to 
us in a new form. • This power is of immense account in our eve^- 
day life ; but it is especially so in the moral world of history, 
where the want of it is sure to lead the reporter of facts astray. 

There may seem to be a large amount of fidelity in stating facts 
as they occur, but without the help of the imagination they will be 
in a large measure distorted, either by passion or interest, and thus 
appear in false colors. A vast amount of the slander in history 
arises from false apprehension arising from the absence of imagi- 



600 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

nation. There must indeed be facts, but there must be a capacity 
and a power by which their relations and bearings can be brought 
into clear view. Where this is large and active, whilst the student 
cannot dispense with facts entirely, he will be able to make a better 
use of a small number of them than one without them can with a 
much larger supply. 

An example illustrative of these remarks is found in the study of 
anatomy and fossil remains, where a bone or fragment of a bone 
may be a fact sufficient, with the help of the imagination and learn- 
ing, to reproduce the whole animal. The same achievement is accom- 
plished by the historian when he enters the spirit of an age and with 
his imagination reproduces its life and form. He brings together, 
as it were, the dry skeletons of history, puts them together, articu- 
lates them, clothes them with muscles and flesh, and breathes into 
them life. — Thus history becomes a fine art as well as a science. 
In recent times history has come to be regarded and studied in this 
light. Neander gave the first impulse in this direction in the sphere 
of Church History. He was particularly qualified b} T his childlike 
character and great learning for such a work. He had the full 
faith that was needed, and with his imagination he brings up the 
church fathers and causes them to stand before us as if still alive. 
The historical pictures or representations of Mosheim are cold and 
dead, whilst those of Neander are full of life and warmth. The 
progress here mentioned has extended into all parts of histoiy. It 
had its beginning in Germany, but it has extended also into our 
own and other countries, and histoiy as an art has entered upon a 
new era. Without faith and imagination, the study of histoiy is 
useless and embarrassing. 

Histoiy, as a science, has, properly speaking, its end in itself. 
Like all other sciences and departments of art, it is valuable on its 
own account, as an object of knowledge, and serves to enlarge our 
inward being. In the first place, therefore, it becomes an important 
discipline for the mind, as tending to the exercise of moral think- 
ing. In close connection with such benefit it tends also to the 
enlargement and liberalization of our spiritual and intellectual ex- 
istence. Thus it is with the tendency of all true science. It serves 
to enlarge and liberalize the sphere of our knowledge, to complete 
our personality, and to make our life general instead of individual. 
Histoiy in this respect is the counterpart of travel. When rightly 
prosecuted as something objective, it frees the mind from subject- 
ive narrowness aud prejudice. Such enlargement of mind at the 
same time serves to humanize, polish and refine its powers. 



Chap. XLV] lectures on history 601 

The lessons of history in the hand of a historian gifted with im- 
agination may be usefully applied by means of the analogies which 
they present, for though no two periods of history are exactly the 
same, yet we must bear in mind that human nature is the same at 
all times and under all circumstances, being subject to the same 
general laws which govern its movements. 

In the proper idea of history it is not necessary to suppose that 
all the actions of mankind must be included. Of these much is 
prehistorical, unhistorical or' extra-historical. Although many facts 
have been undoubtedly lost for our knowledge, } T et we may reason- 
ably question whether it is after all a real loss to the world ; for 
we must remember that the movement of history is always directed 
by some central stream, which includes in itself its own proper end. 
— We assume that the pre-historical does not necessarily appertain 
to the constitution of history; for as in the life of a single man, it 
is not necessary that we should know anything of his infancy, in 
order to estimate his character, which begins property to develop 
itself when his personality becomes complete, so in a nation, that 
which precedes its development cannot be regarded as a serious loss. 
What is really significant for the history of a nation can not be 
lost, since it will enter into its consciousness and abide there. 
And what is true of the history of a nation will be found to be 
true of that of the world as a whole. 

During this period of time Dr. Nevin became concerned about 
the spiritual interests of his friend and neighbor, Ex-President 
James Buchanan. Wheatland was not far from the College build- 
ing, and Mr. Buchanan frequently attended Divine service in the 
College Chapel, especially when Dr. Nevin occupied the pulpit. He 
enjoyed the respect and esteem of the students and Professors, 
who were very courteously received at his home, and instructed no. 
less than entertained by the intellectual conversation of the aged 
Statesman. Caernarvon Place was also only a short distance from 
Mr. Buchanan's residence, and the two families held frequent inter- 
course with each other, the ladies, including Miss Harriet Lane, 
often crossing the fields and the fences to see each other, instead 
of taking the longer route by the public road. — Mr. Buchanan 
came from Christian parentage, had had a pious mother, and had 
received a religious training in his 3^outh. He was, in fact, a relig- 
ious man, and was accustomed to practice many of the duties re- 
quired of a church member. — But he had never made a public pro- 
fession of his faith nor connected himself formally with the Chris— 
38 



602 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

tian Church. When urged to do so b}* his friends, during his public 
life, he was wont to say that he would attend to this duty when he 
should once get out of politics or public life. After he left the 
Presidential chair and returned to his home at Lancaster, he told 
his friends that now all that he had to do was to prepare him- 
self for another world. Immediately, therefore, he gave the subject 
of religion his serious attention, read the Bible, studied the evi- 
dences of Christianity and examined carefully the statements of 
different formularies of faith, in which he was encouraged bj r Dr. 
Kevin, Dr. Wolff', Rev. I. S. Demund, and others. After careful 
study, he said that of all the church confessions that he had read, 
he liked the Heidelberg Catechism the best and could subscribe ex 
animo to all that it contained. 

When, however, it was thought that he would connect himself 
publicly with the faithful, he began to falter, did not know to what 
congregation he should attach himself, and wished that he had at- 
tended to this duty long before. His friends became more solicit- 
ous about him and spoke to him faithfully. Dr. Kevin told him 
that his proper place would be in the Presbyterian Church, to 
which his parents and ancestors belonged ; but the doctrine of pre- 
destination, to which he could not subscribe, was a difficulty in his 
Tv&y in that Church; he was then advised to join the Episcopal 
Church, in which his brother Edward was a clerg3 T man ; but there 
were difficulties there in the wa}- also ; and his friend, the Doctor, was 
at a loss to know what to say next. Incidentally he remarked that 
there was some talk of organizing a congregation in the College 
for the students and Professors' families, which Mr. Buchanan was 
much pleased to hear, remarking that he would be quite willing to 
be received as a member into such a congregation, as soon as it was 
• organized. In such congenial surroundings, with Dr. Kevin as his 
spiritual adviser, in Christian sympathy with the Professors and 
students, he thought he could feel entirely at home, take up his 
cross and follow Christ. Quite likefv he hoped in this way, when 
political excitement was still running very high and he was much 
abused, that in the seclusion of the College his public profession 
of religion would not be noticed in the press, and that he would 
thus escape unfriendly criticism. Only one difficult}', a very slight 
one, seemed to remain in his way. Owing to his age he was appre- 
hensive that he could not kneel with ease to receive the rite of con- 
firmation. He was, however, informed that in the Reformed Church 
kneeling was not considered an essential part of confirmation, and 
that in the case of elderly or infirm persons it was regarded as le- 



Chap. XLV] ex-president buchanan 603 

gitimate to lay hands on them in a standing posture when they 
were confirmed. This was satisfactory, and he was now of his own 
free and intelligent choice a candidate for full membership in the 
Reformed Church. 

Under such a stimulus as this, Dr. Nevin earnestly urged upon 
the Faculty the immediate formation of a college congregation, 
something which, under any circumstances, he felt was the right 
and proper thing. There were, however, some unseemly delays 
in effecting an organization; there were difficulties in separating 
from the old congregation in the city, where the presence of the 
college people was highly appreciated ; and it took some time be- 
fore the congregation in the college could be organized. In the 
meantime Mr. Buchanan became more and more anxious to be ad- 
mitted to the sealing ordinances of the Church ; and as he knew 
that the sands of time were ebbing away, he felt that what he did 
in the matter he ought to do with all his might. Having ascer- 
tained that he would not be required to accept the doctrine. of pre- 
destination as taught in the symbolical books, quietly and unob- 
trusively he was received into the Presbyterian Church in the city 
where he had been accustomed to worship ; and the Presb3^terian 
brethren thanked the college professors for the interest they had 
manifested in the spiritual welfare of one of their own children. 
They had indeed urged their Reformed brethren to look after his 
soul, as they said, and seek to bring him into the Christian fold. 

Mr. Buchanan adorned his Christian profession, was an humble 
and sincere Christian, charitable to the poor, sympathetic with those 
that were sufferers, liberal in the support of public interests, un- 
tarnished in his private moral character, and with more patriotism 
and love for the union of his native country than he has, perhaps, 
as yet received credit for. He died in peace on the first of June, 
1868, believing that he would meet his friends in heaven, and hop- 
ing also that he would be permitted to revisit Wheatland at times, 
drink from its fountain of crystal water, and in spirit hold fast to 
its cherished associations, where he had often found peace and rest 
of mind as he sought refuge from the storms of political life. At 
his funeral Dr. Nevin delivered a very appropriate funeral discourse 
in the main hall of his mansion, where he lay like a statesman, with 
his grand physique, taking his rest, in the peaceful embrace of 
death. See the Life of President Buchanan, by George Ticknor 
Curtis, published in two volumes, in 1883. 

The congregation which Mr. Buchanan wished to join was or- 
ganized on Palm Sunday, 1865, and Dr. Nevin, during his presi- 



604 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

dency of the College, became its pastor. It, perhaps more than 
ari3 T thing else, helped to carry into effect his idea of what all true 
education ought to be — one in which Christian culture should be 
the ruling principle of the whole process. Catechetical classes 
were formed under his administration, and a considerable number 
of students were received into the Church by confirmation, some of 
of whom at least probably would not have joined the Church at all, 
if the opportunity had not been presented in this way. The congre- 
gation grew in membership, and with its services and sacraments 
it has become truly a spiritual home, the house of God, to students, 
professors and others. It has now come to be regarded very prop- 
erly as the central part of the College curriculum. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

THE Heidelberg Catechism, through the writings of Dr. Nevin, 
had been elevated to a degree of respect and honor which it had 
never enjoyed before in the Reformed Church, especially in the 
minds of his students. In the year 1857, Dr. Henr}^ Harbaugh, re- 
ferring to it in one of his books, therefore suggested that the three 
hundredth anniversary of its introduction into the churches and 
schools of the Palatinate, Germairy — January 19, 1563 — should in 
some proper way be celebrated in this country by all those who 
had been instructed out of its form of sound words. At a meeting 
of the Mercersburg Classis, in 1859, Dr. Schaff offered several reso- 
lutions which were adopted, one that the Synod be requested to take 
the necessary steps towards a proper celebration in the year 1863, of 
the Third Centennial of the formation and adoption of the Heidel- 
berg Catechism in Germany • another, that the Synod should order 
the preparation of a critical standard edition of the Catechism in 
the original German and Latin with a revised English translation 
and an Historical Introduction, to be published in superior style 
as a Centennial Edition in 1863. These requests were granted and 
the Tri-centennial was held in the Race Street Reformed Church in 
Philadelphia, one of the oldest in the denomination. The Conven- 
tion met on Friday evening, January 17th, and continued in session 
for a whole week, until Frida}^ evening, January 24th. Dr. Nevin 
presided at this meeting with dignity, and everybody was pleased 
to see him in the chair. 

During the three daily sessions, valuable papers, referring to the 
history, spirit or doctrines of the Catechism, prepared for the occa- 
sion by a number of theologians in Germany and in this country, 
were read and discussed. Those from Dr. Hundeshagen, Profes- 
sor in Heidelberg University, from Dr. Herzog of Erlangen, from 
Dr. Ebrard of Erlangen, from Dr. Ullman of Carlsruhe, and from 
Dr. Schotel of Leyclen in the Netherlands, added much interest to 
the occasion and were listened to with the closest attention by 
crowded audiences from the city and all parts of the country. In 
connection with these, essays were also read by the following minis- 
ters of the Church in this country: B. S. Schneck, T. C. Porter, H. 
Harbaugh, Theodore Appel, Thomas G. Appel, M. Kieffer, E. V. 
Gerhart, G. B. Russell, D. Grans, B. Bailsman. J. H. A. Bomberger, 

(605) 



606 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

B. C. Wolff, and Thomas De Witt of the Reformed Dutch Church. 
They were afterwards published both in the English and German 
languages in an octavo of nearly six hundred pages, under the 
title: The Tercentenary Monument ; — a work of permanent value 
in the literature of the Catechism. The occasion was one of more 
than ordinary interest, where friend held fellowship with friend and 
the communion here on earth seemed to be complete. The general 
feeling was thus expressed by one of the speakers at the closing 
meeting : 

" Mr. President. — INTo doubt I express the general impression of 
this Convention when I say that we have been instructed and edi- 
fied during the past week. It has been to us truly a season of re- 
freshing and revival. For the time being, we have not felt that our 
country has been in a state of civil war. Our thoughts have turned 
away from scenes of carnage, and gone back to those bright periods 
of historj" in which the best and most cherished institutions of 
modern times took their rise. We have visited the Fatherland, and 
communed with the spirits of Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, Melanch- 
thon, Frederick the Pious and a host of others, that made their 
age luminous with their piet} r and good deeds. In such societ}^ as 
this, we have been enabled to exclude from our minds, for a brief 
while, the scenes of the stormy and tempestous present. For this 
we are thankful to God, the Giver of everj^ good and perfect gift. 
- — Having communed with the past, Mr. President, it might be 
profitable, if we had time, to look forward into the future. On 
this occasion we stand on elevated ground, upon which light both 
from the past and the future is shed. Long before another celebra- 
tion like this comes around we will have finished our work here on 
earth, and our names will be forgotten or remembered only as they 
appear on the Minutes of the Synod. From this eminence we may 
cast a glance into the future and already hear the footsteps of those 
who shall come after us and take our places in the Church of God. 
We could wish that such occasions might occur oftener in the 
Church. But the time has come for us to part ; and to give these 
remarks a practical bearing, and with the view of perpetuating the 
historical feeling here awakened, I propose that a committee be 
appointed to consider the importance and propriety' of establish- 
ing an Historical Society in the German Reformed Church, to re- 
port at the next meeting of the Synod." — The Committee was 
appointed and in due season the Society was formed. 

The new potyglot edition of the Heidelberg Catechism published 
by Mr. Charles Scribner, of New York, appeared in the fall of this 



Chap. XL VI] tercentenary celebration GOT 

memorial year under the following title: The Heidelberg Cate- 
chism in German, Latin and English, with an Historical Introduc- 
tion. The Historical Introduction prepared by Dr. Nevin, occupied 
119 out of the 2TT pages of the book, and as an historical mono- 
graph possesses a permanent and sterling value. — The Committee 
upon whom it devolved to prepare this valuable contribution to the 
literature of the Church consisted of the following members: Dr. 
E. V. Gerhart, Dr. John W. Nevin, Dr. Henry Harbaugh, Dr. John 
S. Kessler, Dr. Daniel Zacharias, and the Elders, William Heyser, 
Rudolph F. Kelker, and Lewis H. Steiner, M. D. 

During the Convention on Sunday forenoon the Holy Sacrament 
was administered to a large body of communicants, on which oc- 
casion an appropriate sermon was preached by Dr. Nevin on the 
u Undying Life in Christ," from the words: Jesus Christ, the same 
yesterday, and to-day, and forever. Heb. 13: 8. The discourse 
was of a remarkable character, one of the crowning features of this 
tercentenary commemoration, and we therefore place it before our 
readers just as it was delivered. 

The text looks immediately to what goes before, though not just 
in the way implied by our common English version. This seems 
to refer the previous exhortation to the example of those who were 
still living, as teachers and rulers in the Church, and whose life is 
there characterized as having its aim or end in Christ, who is al- 
ways the same. But the reference in the original is plainly not to 
these, but to former teachers and rulers — among them the blessed 
martyrs Stephen and James — men who had continued steadfast in 
their faith to the last, and were now gone to inherit its rewards; 
so that it would give the meaning better to say : " Remember them 
which have had the rule over you; who have spoken unto you the 
word of God ; whose faith follow, considering the issue of their 
conversation or life;" that is, fixing your attention on the fact that 
they held the beginning of their confidence steadfast unto the end. 
Then it follows as an independent proposition: "Jesus Christ is 
the same 3 7 esterday, and to-day, and forever," the full meaning of 
which, in its relation to the affecting exhortation going before, can 
be more easily felt than expressed, while it becomes the occasion 
at once also for the solemn caution in the next verse : " Be not 
carried about with divers and strange doctrines." The force of it 
in both directions will come more fully into view as we go on to 
consider now the great subject itself which it offers to our contem- 
plation — the sameness, constancy , and abiding perpetuity of Christ, 



608 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

in contrast with the mutability and vanity of the icorld in every 
other view. 

We say, of the world in every other view; because it is as belong- 
ing to the world, and forming part of its life, that our Lord Jesus 
Christ is here exhibited for our consideration. It is, indeed, onl^ 
in virtue of His divine nature that He possesses the " power of an 
endless life," to such extent as to be the same yesterday, to-d&y, 
and forever ; but still it is not of His divinity separately considered 
that the text must be understood to speak, but of His divinity 
rather as joined with His humanity in the constitution of His 
Mediatorial Person, through which He became joined at the same 
time with our general human existence, and incorporated thus into 
the life and being of the world. It is not of the Word, as "the 
same was in the beginning with God," that this declaration of un- 
changing sameness is made, but of the Word made flesh; not of 
the Son of God, considered simply in His eternal generation, as 
born of the Father before all time — "by whom also He made the 
worlds" — but of the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, by the 
power of the Holy Ghost, into the very bosom of His own creation, 
so as to become the deepest principle of its history through all 
time. It is the Man, Christ Jesus, who, in the midst of this ever- 
rolling, ever-changing system of things which we call the world, 
stands forth sublimely to the gazing admiration of faith as "the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 

The general relation which Christ holds to the world in this view 
is twofold. He is in Himself what the world is not, and has no 
power ever to be aside from His person; but He is this, at the same 
time, not for Himself simply, but for the world also, which is thus 
brought to find in Him its own last end and only perfect sense. 
What is a relation thus of opposition and contrast, in one view, 
becomes every where, in another view, a relation at the same time 
of inward correspondence and agreement. Both aspects of the 
case must be taken together, to make our apprehension of it in an} 7 
way complete. 

I. There is such a relation of opposition and correspondence, in 
the first place, between Christ and the world regarded as a mere 
system of nature. This is the nearest and most immediate view 
we can take of the general sense of the text. 

It belongs to the very idea of what we call nature, that it should 
be subject everywhere to fluctuation and change. Things in this 
form are not what they are, by standing still, but b} T being rather 
in a perpetual flow. They come and go, appear and disappear, con- 



Chap. XLYI] the undying life in christ 609 

tinually, in the same instant ; and snch stability as they may seem 
to have in any case is never the sameness exactly of the same 
things, but the same show only of different things that follow each 
other in restless succession. Such constancy as the world has in 
this form is its inconstancy. Its very being, we may say, is an 
everlasting ceasing to be ; like the image thrown from the face of 
a mirror, which holds only in the vanishing process of its own per- 
petual reproduction, through each following moment of its appar- 
ent duration. 

In this broad view, the fleeting, transitor\ r character of the world 
is not simply represented to us in the more outward, palpable 
changes that are always taking place in the course of nature. These 
indeed are fraught with lessons of wisdom on the subject, which 
only the most careless can fail to consider and lay to heart. The 
rolling seasons and circling years are here full of instruction. 
Flowing brooks and changing forests, the flowers of spring and the 
colored leaves of autumn, all have a voice to remind us that the 
" fashion of this world passeth away." All around us, and all 
within us, viewed in such merety physical light, is adapted to force 
home upon us the thought that the world of nature is vain, and our 
own life, as comprehended in it, all the while hastening to an end. 
It is a perpetual round throughout of repetition and change, in 
which the whole creation may be heard falling in with that old 
burden of the Preacher: "Yanitj- of vanities; vanity of vanities; 
all is vanity." But it is not simply in these outward changes of 
form and state, we say, that the unsubstantial, unabiding character 
of the world, as we now have it under consideration, challenges our 
most thoughtful regard. For an earnestly reflecting mind, it is 
something which is felt to reach far beyond such appearances, and 
to enter into the universal constitution of nature itself. 

As compared with its more ephemeral forms of existence, we 
sometimes think of the earth itself as abiding forever, and talk of 
its everlasting hills and mountains and seas ; but in truth there is 
no room, philosophically speaking, for ai^ such distinction as this; 
and when we are brought to commune more closely with the life of 
nature, we are made to feel that it carries with it really no force. 
The clouds are no more fleeting in their substance than the rocks ; 
the flowers are of no more evanescent constitution than the ever- 
lasting hills. Nay, it is in the contemplation precisely of these ap- 
parently enduring forms of creation, that the deeply meditative 
spirit comes to its most overwhelming and affecting sense of the 
emptiness and nothingness of the world in itself considered ; since 



610 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

the more we consider thern the more all are felt to be apparitional 
only, phenomenal merety, and not substantial; signs and shadows, 
which have their proper truth not so much in themselves as in things 
that lie beyond them in another order of existence altogether. 

In this view it is that the visible earth and heavens are so fre- 
quently employed, in the Old Testament, to represent, in the wa\ T 
of contrast, the eternal and immutable nature of God. " Before the 
mountains were brought forth," sa} T s the Psalmist, "or ever Thou 
hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to ever- 
lasting, Thou art God." All sink into insignificance before Him, 
and become as nothing over against His power. "By the word of 
the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the 
breath of His mouth." In all their visible grandeur they are but 
the outward manifestation of His invisible will, to which the} T owe 
their being every moment, and which is something infinitely greater 
and more enduring than themselves. " Lift up your eyes to the 
heavens," God ssiys by the Prophet, "and look upon the earth be- 
neath; for the heavens shall vanish awa} T like smoke, and the earth 
shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die 
in like manner ; but nry salvation shall be forever, and my righteous- 
ness shall not be abolished." And again, more generally: "All 
flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the 
field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of 
the Lord bloweth upon it: surety the people is grass. The grass 
withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand 
forever." 

But the word of the Lord, which is opposed in this way to the 
transitoriness of the world, is nothing less, in the end, according to 
St. Peter (1 Pet. i. 25), than the word of the Gospel itself; and in 
this character again it is, as we know, no outward declaration or 
command simply proceeding from Jehovah, but the personal Word, 
the divine Logos, which in the fulness of time became man for us 
men and for our salvation, in the person of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. "All things were made by Him," we are told, "and 
without Him was not any thing made that is made ; " and so of 
Christ Himself it is said, with reference to what He was for the 
world thus before He became man : " He is the first-born of every 
creature ; for by Him were all things created that are in heaven and 
that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by 
Him, and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all 
thinsrs consist." 



Chap. XLVI] the undying life in christ 611 

We need not be surprised, then, to find the full force of this re- 
lation ascribed in the New Testament to our Saviour Jesus Christ, 
the Incarnate Son of God, in the very same terms that are used to 
represent it in the Old Testament as holding of the infinite Jehovah 
Himself. What He was for the world before He became man, the 
fountain of its life, the foundation of its being, that He continued 
to be also after He became man ; the work of the new creation 
taking up into itself in this way the work of the old creation, so as 
to be only the fulfilment, in a higher sphere, of its original purpose 
and sense. Because He was the first-born of the natural creation 
thus (Col. i. 15-18), He became also the "beginning, the first-born 
from the dead," the principle of the resurrection ; because all things 
were made by Him, and for Him, He became also the head of His 
body, the Church, "that in all things He might have the pre-emi- 
nence." It is as the Maker of the worlds, upholding all things by 
the word of His power (Heb. i. 2-3), that, after He had by Himself 
purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on 
high. In which view also the sacred writer does not hesitate to 
apply to Him (Heb. i. 8-12) such strong language as this: "Thy 
throne, God, is for ever and ever. Thou, Lord, in the beginning 
hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work 
of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they 
all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou 
fold them up, and they shall be changed : but Thou art the same, 
and Thy years shall not fail." So, after His resurrection, we hear 
Him proclaiming Himself to St. John in the vision of Patmos : " I 
am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, which is, and 
which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." 

Thus is Christ in His human character itself — the Son of Man, 
who is at the same time the Son of God — over against the whole 
world of nature in every other view, the same yesterday, to-cla}^, 
and forever. The ages come together in His person. He is before 
all things, and Irv Him all things consist. They change, but He 
remains in the midst of them always the same ; for through all 
their changes He lives and works, upholding them by the word of 
His power. Their mutability serves, in this way, to enforce the 
thought of His abiding constancy ; their vanity points continually 
to the fulness of immortal life in His person. But the relation is 
not one of mere outward comparison and opposition. As thus 
different from the world, Christ is at the same time, as we have 
seen, in the most profound sense one with the world. He is the 
principle, the original and fountain, of its whole first creation ; and 



612 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

in this character, He has entered still more deeply into its life 
through the mystery of the Incarnation, so as to be now the prin- 
ciple within it of all that is comprehended in the idea of the second 
creation. 

In this twofold view, then, He may be said to redeem the world 
from its inherent vanity, and to make over to it the power of His 
own glorious immortality. There is such a thing, we know, as the 
glorification of nature itself through union with His person, caus- 
ing it to pass forever beyond the conditions of vanity and change 
to which it is subject in our present state. The body of Christ 
Himself was glorified in this way when He rose from the dead; the 
bodies of His people, we are told, shall hereafter be made glorious 
in like manner; and there is to be at the last, in some way which 
we cannot now understand, a glorification also of the whole natural 
creation — new heavens and a new earth (2 Pet. iii. 13) — resulting 
from the victorious headship of Him who is the Alpha and the 
Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the ending, of its 
universal being and life. And may we not see how the assurance 
and sense of all this for faith must go to invest even the world as 
it now stands with the freshness and beauty of a new perennial life, 
such as it can never possibty have in any other view? If it be in 
the power of mere poetry and art, so to raise the perishable forms 
of nature into the sphere of the ideal that they shall become there 
in a certain sense immortal, how much more may it not be possible 
for religion to make all things luminous with the glow of a still 
higher immortality, by joining them with the thought of God, and 
the undying, everywhere present grace and truth of Jesus Christ? 

II. This relation of Christ to the world, however, comes into 
still clearer view when we ascend from the sphere of mere physical 
existence into the sphere of humanity and history, where nature 
shows itself joined with self-conscious mind, and the world stands 
sublimated to its highest sense in the free personality of man. 

The mutable, perishing character of the world in this superior 
order of its existence is adapted to affect us with a sense of its 
vanity, far beyond all that we feel in considering the mere changes 
of nature. These last are in full harmony with the constitution to 
which they belong. It lies in the very conception of nature that 
it should be made up of endless parts and subsist by endless revo- 
lution and change. That is the law of its being, which shows it at 
once to be created for something beyond itself, in whose presence 
it is required always to vanish and pass awa}\ But it belongs to 
the conception of mind that it should not thus vanish and pass 



Chap. XLVI] the undying life in christ 613 

away ; that it should bring unity into the manifold ; that it should 
fix the fleeting forms of sense in firm and stable duration. In the 
spirit of man, past and future are brought together in the power 
of the present — the transitoriness of time surmounted in the ap- 
prehension of the Infinite. He was made, we are told, in the image 
and likeness of God, to be the head of the natural world and to 
exercise lordship over it in every lower view — to be in it and of it 
through his bodily organization, and yet to be above it at the same 
time through his intelligence and reason, disclosing within himself 
a new and higher order of life altogether. He was formed for im- 
mortality, and all his powers and capacities point to such glorious 
destination. In his life the past should not be lost and left behind, 
but should perpetuate itself always in each succeeding portion of 
time; and there should be for him, properly speaking, no death. 

For such an existence as his, the very thought of death is some- 
thing unnatural, violent — nothing less, in truth, than the most tre- 
mendous contradiction. And, as the life of the individual man 
should be thus full and enduring, there should be a corresponding 
harmony and deathless unity also for the life of the race. Histor}^ 
should be but the concord of ages, meeting together in the solution 
of the same grand problem of humanity. Nation should join hand 
in hand with nation, and each generation live itself forward con- 
tinually into the life of the next, to carry out and complete, in one 
universal sense, the true idea of a reign of truth and righteousness 
upon the earth. 

But how different from all this, alas! do we find to be now the 
actual state of this higher human creation ! Sin has entered into 
the world, and death by sin; and so death has passed upon all men, 
for that all have sinned. That which was formed to be the region 
of undying life in the world's constitution has become itself the re- 
gion of mortality and change; in common with the lower nature 
around him, man is made subject to a vanity which was not origi- 
nally his own; and it is this subjection precisely which, more than 
all else for the contemplative spirit, causes the whole world to 
seem empty and vain. That the grass should wither, and the flower 
fade, is no matter for sorrowful surprise; it belongs to their nature 
to come and go in this way; but that all flesh should be like grass, 
and the glorious estate of man as the flower of the field — that may 
well be a cause for sadness and lamentation. 

That a life formed for immortality should be found continually 
breathing itself out like a vapor that appeareth for a little time and 
then vanisheth away ; that there should be room at all to resemble 



614 AT LANCASTER ER0M 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

it in this way to the most evanescent things around us — this indeed 
is something: over the thought of which it is not unnatural even to 
shed tears of grief. Well might the Psalmist exclaim : " Lord, make 
me to know mine end, and the measure of nrr daj's, what it is; that 
I may know how frail I am. Behold, Thou has made my days as 
an handbreath, and mine age is as nothing before Thee: verily, 
every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Surely every man 
walketh in a vain show; surelj^ they are disquieted in vain: he 
heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them." 

This vanit} T reaches forth, at the same time, into the universal 
history of the race. It has made it to be fragmentary, disjointed, 
and to a great extent fearfully chaotic. It spoils the brotherhood 
of nations, and breaks the unity of ages and generations. Life is 
carried forward from period to period, it is true, with some sort of 
memory and tradition ; but it is a shadow}^ bond at beet which thus 
connects the present with the past, and such as proves for the liv- 
ing in the end only a ghostl} T communion with the dead. " One 
generation passeth away, and another generation cometh," like the 
leaves of the forest, or as shadows that chase each other over the 
autumnal plain. It is the old wail of Moses, the man of Grod : 
" Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children 
of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday 
when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them 
awaj' as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are 
like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and 
groweth up ; in the evening it is cut clown, and withereth." In this 
order of mere nature, those who have gone before us into the other 
world can be thought of only as having been gathered into Sheol, 
the land of darkness, forgetfulness, and silence; and when it is 
asked: "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they 
live forever?" the one same answer must ever be the question itself, 
reverberated from the. hollow sides of the tomb. 

In contrast, now, with all this, Jesus Christ stands out to the 
vision of faith as the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is 
so not simply as God, but also as man. The general vanity of the 
race extends not to His person. As He was without sin Himself, 
He could not come under the power of death except by His own 
free consent ; and then it was, as we know, not that He might re- 
main in the grave or see corruption, but that death itself should 
be destroyed and swallowed up of victory, through His glorious 
resurrection. In all the time of His humiliation upon the earth 
He could say: "Before Abraham was, I am;" and now that He 



Chap. XLYI] the undying life in christ 615 

reigns exalted at the right hand of God, it is but the full revela- 
tion of the majesty that lay hid in His person in the manger and 
upon the cross, the bursting forth again of the glory which He had 
with the Father before the foundation of the world. His goings 
forth are from of old, from everlasting ; and of His kingdom and 
righteousness there shall be no end. 

But what we need most to understand and consider is, that in 
all this He is not simply distinguished from our general human life 
in every other view, but comprehended in it also in such way as to 
be for it at large what He is for Himself. His relation to it in this 
wa} 7 is more intimate, more profound, and more comprehensive 
than that of its natural root in the first Adam. He is within it the 
principle and centre of a new creation, in the bosom of which the 
power of the old curse is found to be broken, the law of sin and 
death abolished and brought to an end. There is no condemnation 
now to them that are in Christ Jesus. They are redeemed from 
the vanit} 7 of this dying world ; they have passed from death unto 
life. Old things for them have passed awa} 7 , and all things have 
become new. They belong even here to an economj 7 or order of 
existence which transcends entirely the whole constitution of na- 
ture, the whole reign of Satan, the god of this world ; in virtue of 
which they may be said to be sharers already of Christ's immor- 
tality, as they are destined also to reign with Him hereafter eter- 
nally in heaven. 

" In Him was life," we are told — life in its fontal, self-existence 
form; "and the life became the light of men " — was not simply the 
origination of their natural being, but passed over into them also 
as the incorruptible "word of God which liveth and abideth for- 
ever." "Because I live," the Saviour says, "ye shall live also." 
"Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and 
was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have 
the keys of hell and of death." He is not simply the proclaimer 
here of an outward doctrine — a truth or fact holding be} T ond His 
own person — but the actual destroyer of death, who thus brings 
life and immortality to light by bringing them to pass, and so caus- 
ing them to be where otherwise they could have had no place what- 
ever. " I am the resurrection and the life," we hear Him saying — 
the whole power and possibility of these things for the human 
world: "he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 

Holding such relation to the world, it is easy to see how Christ 
becomes for the life of humanity, regenerated in this way, such a 



616 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

power of unity in space and continuity in time as it cannot possibly 
have under any other form. As the deepest principle of it, He 
must be at the same time the most comprehensive bond of its organ- 
ization in every view. 

The new creation shows itself wider, thus, than all distinctions 
whether of nature or from sin, that belong to the old. It joins in 
one the most distant nations of the earth, and tunes into harmoirv 
the physical differences and moral discords of the whole human 
race. " He is our peace," says St. Paul; here again not in a merely 
outward way as a teacher of peace, but as being Himself such a new 
organization of our universal human life, as, by carrying it be3 T ond 
all these occasions of difference and schism to its last ground in 
God, causes the sense of them to be overwhelmed by the feeling of 
that better and far more glorious common existence, in the power 
of which they are thus neutralized and brought to an end. " He 
hath made both one " — it is said of the Gentile and the Jew — having 
abolished in His flesh the enmity, to make in Himself of twain one 
new man — so making peace ; and came and preached peace to } t ou 
which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through Him 
we both have an access by one Spirit unto the Father. So univer- 
sally: In Christ Jesus "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; but Christ 
is all and in all." 

And what He is for all coexistent states and conditions of the 
race in this way, He is also for its successive generations in time. 
As He joins the nations together, so does He bind the ages into 
one; imparting to them, as it were, a simultaneous being in the unit}^ 
of His own glorious life. 

So, even in the Old Testament, the relation of the righteous to 
God is represented as their refuge and escape from the vanity of 
the world, by which they must otherwise be swept awaj T as with an 
overwhelming flood. They are housed in Him securely through 
the ever-rolling course of years, according to that grand declaration 
of the ninetieth Psalm: "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place 
in all generations." Even in Sheol the patriarchs are not dead; 
have not become a meinor}' only or a name ; have not vanished into 
Sadducean vacuity and night. The} T live still, in virtue of their 
living union with God. Hence the force of our Saviour's argument : 
" As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not heard that 
which was spoken unto } T ou b} T God, saying, I am the God of Abra- 
ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living." 



Chap. XL VI] the undying life in christ 617 

Now, however, in Christ the power of this unseen life is made to 
be something far more full aud real for believers than it was before. 
The Old Testament saints had their hidden abode in God, indeed, 
onh- through Him as the everlasting Word ; but it was in anticipa- 
tion always of what was necessary to make their life in this form 
actual and complete, namely, the coming of Christ in the flesh; and 
so stood in the character of hope rather than in that of present, 
satisfying fruition. " These all died in faith," we are told (Heb. xi. 
13, 39, 40), "not having received the promises, but having seen 
them afar off. Having obtained a good report through faith, they 
yet received not the promise; God having provided some better 
thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." 
Abraham accordingly, in that uncompleted state, looked joyfully 
for the day of Christ (John viii. 56); and he saw it, and was glad. 

But the Word, which was only coming before, has now actually 
come ; that eternal life which was with the Father has been mani- 
fested through the mystery of the Incarnation; and, being joined 
to it and made one with it, by the power of faith, all true Christians 
have in it an immortality of existence that reaches through all time. 
They are said to be in Christ ; and the life which the}^ live in the 
flesh is not so much their own as that which is lived into them, 
through the Spirit, from His undying person. " We are in Him 
that is true," says St. John, "even in His Son Jesus Christ: this 
is the true God and eternal life." To be so taken up into Christ is 
itself to be taken out of the vanity of this perishing world, and to 
be made superior to its revolutions and ages. In Christ, the dead 
still continue to live. This itself — and no simply outward state in 
any other view, whether in hades or heaven — is the true conception 
of their immortality. It is such an immortality, moreover, as in- 
cludes in it the full power of the resurrection. " For if we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them which sleep in Jesus 
will God bring with Him." Our life now, on either side of the 
grave, "is hid with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is our 
life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory." 11 
(Col. iii. 4.) 

We believe, then, in the "communion of saints," as reaching not 
only to those who yet live, but to those also who have died in the 
Lord. When the question is now asked: "Our fathers, where are 
they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" the answer is no 
longer a doleful echo simply sounded back upon us from their tombs, 
but a voice from heaven rather, saying: "Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that 
39 



618 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them." 
We will not worship them ; we may not invoke their intercession 
and help, as we might be glad to do if they were still with us here 
on the earth; but neither will we consent to think of them as elysian 
shadows only, dwelling be} 7 ond the clouds, and in no farther com- 
munication with the Church below. They are with us still, not in 
memorjr alone — not as having a mere fictitious immortality in our 
minds, through the recollection of their words and deeds — but as 
having their common home with us in Him who is the same yester- 
day, and to-day, and forever. We are come, in Him, to no necrop- 
olis simply, no voiceless city of the dead; but "unto the city of the 
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable com- 
pany of angels ; to the General Assembly and Church of the first- 
born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and 
to the spirits of just men made perfect." 

We join in waking, active worship, around the throne of God, 
with the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship 
of the prophets, and the noble army of martyrs, as well as with the 
holy Church throughout all the world. And, at this time especi- 
ally, may we not be allowed to say that we join in worship also 
with the founders and spiritual heroes of our own Reformed Zion, 
the end of whose conversation we are now called upon to consider, 
that we may be stirred up afresh to follow their faith ? Is it too 
bold a thought, that in the midst at least of that "great cloud of 
witnesses " with which we are surrounded from all ages in the 
heavenly world, the spirits also of such men as Luther and Zwingli, 
the stern Calvin and the meek Melanchthon, Olevianus and Ursinus, 
and that great and good prince whose name still lives for us em- 
balmed and enshrined in the Heidelberg Catechism as Frederick 
the Pious, may even now be looking down upon us with kindred 
sympathy and delight, and taking part in these devotional solem- 
nities as their own ? What is the narrow chasm of three hundred 
years for the Spirit of Jesus Christ, whose wonder-working prov- 
ince it is to overcome all separations both in time and space ? 
What are whole centuries of death, in Him who is the true Life ; 
the Alpha and Omega of God's creation ; the vanquisher of the 
curse that lay upon the world through sin ; who holds in His hand 
now the keys of hades and the grave; and in whom, thus risen 
from the dead and made head over all things to the Church, His 
saints have their common habitation and home through all gener- 
ations? 

III. Once more: Jesus Christ is the same yesterda}", to-day, and 



Chap. XL VI] the undying life in christ 619 

forever, as being the absolute fountain of all truth omd reason for 
men, so that there can be neither certainty nor stability in the in- 
tellectual world, under any view, except as it is ruled, ordered, and 
actuated everywhere from His presence and by His Spirit. 

So much lies at once in the character which belongs to Him as 
the everlasting Word. He is, in this view, as we have already seen, 
the beginning or principle, and so of course the universal reason 
also, of the whole creation. He is the thought of God, which finds 
utterance in the general constitution of the world ; and He is the 
source at the same time of all the power of thinking in a created 
form, by which it is possible for this thought to be in any measure 
perceived or understood. It enters into the very conception, how- 
ever, of all such created and dependent reason, that it should be in 
itself liable to error, and so exposed to variation and change ; and 
this is a liability which, in such a world as ours, must necessarily 
run into all sorts of actual aberration and lapse from the truth. 
To these imperfections and disorders, then, whether proceeding 
from the weakness of nature or the power of sin, Christ stands 
opposed as the original, independent Logos, with whom there is 
" no variableness nor shadow of turning ; " while He offers Himself 
to us, at the same time, as being here again the only proper and 
sufficient complement of our wants, and the principle of all true 
light within us, both for this world and for that which is to come. 

This vanity of our intellectual and moral life is, of all vanities to 
which we are subject, in some respects the most mournful and sad; 
for it meets us just where we know there ought to be solid and 
stable duration — namely, in the region of ideas, whose very office 
it is to surmount the fleeting forms of sense, and to hand themselves 
forward in spiritual force from one generation to another. We find 
ourselves confronted with it, however, from all sides, through every 
age of the world. The thinking of men, even more than their out- 
ward working and walking, has been for the most part only what 
the Psalmist calls a vain show. 

Even in the sphere of Christianity itself, we find no end to the 
differences and flowing changes of human thought. This is owing 
largely, of course, to the blinding and corrupting influence of sin; 
but it is the result in part also of what we may style the necessary 
limitations of our nature itself, making it impossible for us to see 
truth by ourselves in an absolute and universal way. Our particular 
thinking is comprehended always in the more general thinking which 
surrounds us; and this, again, moves and changes from one age to 
another, according t.o the general law of our human life. For our 



620 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

present state, in this waj T , it would seem that there can be no abso- 
lutely stationary apprehension even of Christian doctrine itself; 
since to be stationaiy is to be dead, and only that which moves has 
life. We know it to be a fact, at all events, that Christianity, from 
the beginning, has been a world of thought ever in motion, whose 
uniformity and continuance have been maintained only through 
vast oppositions and never-ceasing changes of form and aspect. 
The same truths have turned themselves in new phases to the con- 
templation of the world, age after age. Doctrines have had their 
histoiy; confessions, their appointed times and spheres; churches, 
their different tasks and successive missions. All has come down 
to us through perpetual commotion and change. 

But, in the midst of all this fluctuation, Christ Himself, the foun- 
tain of Christianity, remains ever the same. Even the change from 
the Old Testament to the ]\ T ew, vast revolution as it was, changed 
not the identity of Him who was equally the soul and the life of 
both. After His Incarnation, He was still the angel which had 
been with the Jewish Church before in the wilderness; and for 
eighteen centuries, now, He has never forgotten for a moment His 
promise to be in the midst of the Church in its Christian form, 
through all ages, on to the end of the world. In this view, He is 
not sirnpty one in Himself, over against the manifold and the suc- 
cessive, as exhibited in the historical movement of Christianity be- 
yond His own person ; but He is one also for what is thus outside 
of Himself, a principle of unity for the Church, and the power that 
binds and holds it together in true Catholic wholeness through all 
ages; making it to be still, in spite of all partial and temporary dis- 
cords, the home of His Spirit, and as such, for the world at large, 
the only "pillar and ground of the truth." 

Standing in this universal sameness of Jesus Christ, then, we will 
not desire on the present occasion to limit and bound our Christian 
sympathies Dy any merely partial ecclesiastical lines. Our Tercen- 
tenary Jubilee is indeed, in one sense, a denominational festival, 
which has for its object the new intonation of our old denomina- 
tional 'history and life. We believe that the Reformed Church had 
a vocation to be, and to speak forth the confessional word that was 
in her at the beginning ; and we cannot see that the time has come 
for this word to be either withdrawn or hushed into indifferent 
silence. Rather it seems to us, that if Protestantism itself be still 
necessary, then must it be for the interest of Protestantism, and so 
of universal Christianity also, that the great issues by which it was 
divided within itself at. the first, should not now be thus passively 



Chap. XLYI] the undying life in christ 621 

surrendered and given up; but that they should be rather so main- 
tained still, as to compel, if possible, their conciliation and settle- 
ment in a truly inward way. 

Only so can we hope for the catholicity or wholeness of positive 
faith in distinction from the pseudo-catholicity of merely negative 
and hollow unbelief. We are, therefore, still Reformed, and we 
may add also German Reformed. We glory, as of old, in the 
Heidelberg Catechism, and we are here met to festoon with wreaths 
of evergreen the memory of the fathers to whom we stand indebted 
for its origin and birth three hundred years ago. All this we will- 
ingly confess. But Cod forbid that we should do this now in any 
spirit of mere sectarian bigotiy and exclusiveness, or that we should 
so hold our feast as to nourish and strengthen in ourselves the 
feeling that we alone are the Lord's people, and that beyond our 
confessional life there is no room to conceive either of a true Chris- 
tianity or a true Church. 

We mean by our solemnity, certainty, no such wickednes and 
folly as that. On the contrary, we will try to make this commem- 
oration an occasion rather for cultivating in ourselves the sense of 
Christianity in its widest and most universal form. We will not 
dare to make our Catechism the full and whole measure of Christ. 
We will not stop short in our faith with either Luther or Calvin; 
we will not put our ecclesiastical fathers, whether in Switzerland 
or Germany, in the place of Him who "holdeth the seven stars in 
His right hand, and walketh in the midst of the seven golden can- 
dlesticks ;" and who alone is the first and the last, the beginning and 
the ending, of the new creation as of the old, the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever. Through all human confessions, we will look 
to Him who is before and beyond them all, as the one glorious ob- 
ject of the universal Christian Creed, in union with whom the Church 
also remains always and everywhere one — the fulness of Him that 
filleth all in all. This emphatically is that faith of the fathers who 
have gone before us, which we are now called upon and here solemn- 
ly pledge ourselves to follow — considering the end of their conver- 
sation — in opposition to all " divers and strange doctrines." With 
them, as with St. Peter of old, we say, now and evermore : " To 
whom shall we go, Lord, but unto Thee? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life; and we believe, and are sure, that Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the Living God!" 

We close with a few general conclusions of vast practical ac- 
count, suggested 03^ the whole subject. 

1. Jesus Christ is Himself the truth and reality of the Gospel, 



622 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

which He came into the world to proclaim. It is not a message of 
salvation simply published by Him in an outward way, "as God 
at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times before unto 
the fathers by the prophets : " it is the revelation of redemption 
and life for men immediately in His own person. His Incarnation 
— the act of His coming in the flesh — was itself redemptive, and 
may be said to have included in itself, from the beginning, all that 
was needed for the full salvation of the world. It formed the true 
mediation between God and man, and served to bridge over the 
awful chasm which before separated earth from heaven. What we 
call the atonement in its more special sense, as wrought out bj T His 
sufferings and death, was nothing more, after all, than the irresist- 
ible, inevitable movement of the Incarnation itself out to its own 
necessary end. Once in the world as He was in this way, there 
was for Him no other outlet from the burden of its curse, save that 
which was offered to Him by the accursed death of the cross : He 
must suffer in order that He might through the resurrection enter 
into His glory. All, however, \slv in His being "born of a woman, 
and so made under the law, to redeem them that were under the 
law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." The atonement 
and resurrection were but the outworking energy of that eternal 
life, which was manifested in Him when the Word became flesh. 
His coming into the world was at once the real bringing into it of 
a new order of existence, a form of life higher than all that was in 
the world before, which then could not remain bound to His single 
person, but was made to flow forth from Him, through His resur- 
rection Spirit, as the power of a new creation in the Church also, 
for the benefit of His people through all ages. 

This is the true, distinctive conception of Christianity, as we 
have it graphically set forth in the Apostles' Creed ; and in this 
sense, accordingly, we say of Christian^ that it is made and con- 
stituted literally by the constitution of Christ's person ; that it is 
thus not a doctrine primarily nor a rule of life, but a grand histor- 
ical fact ; and that He is in such view the root and principle of it 
from beginning to end. He is not simply the occasion of it, or the 
cause of it, or the origin and commencement of it in the common 
sense of these terms, but He is, in the very constitution of His 
person itself, as the "second Adam who is the Lord from heaven," 
what we may call the seminal or fontal source of the universal new 
creation in this form. Christianity starts genetically from no con- 
fession, no catechism, no outward creed — naj 7 , with all reverence 
be it spoken, not even from the Bible itself — but only and alone 



Chap. XLYI] the undying life in christ 623 

from that bright Morning Star, " the root and the offspring of 
David," of whom it is said, "When Thou tookest upon Thee to 
deliver man, Thou didst humble Thyself to be born of a Yirgin; 
when Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst 
open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." 

2. Truth, thus, in its highest form for man is identical with life, 
and is something to be reached and possessed only through living 
communication with the life of Christ. As the everlasting Word, 
He is the source both of the reason which is in things universal^, 
and also of the reason by which alone it is possible for them to be 
understood. By His Incarnation, more fully still, He is the reve- 
lation of God's mind and will immediately in the sphere of our 
rational nature itself. This revelation is no outward shining siniply 
in the way of precept or doctrine, but the light that streams directs 
from what He is in His own nature and being; and for this reason, 
also, it is not something to be apprehended on the part of men by 
mere thought and reflection, but must ever have for its vehicle into 
their minds the very power of that heavenly life itself to which it 
belongs, and apart from which, indeed, it has no reality or truth 
whatever. Thus, it is not the light of Christ that is represented in 
the Gospel, as communicating life to the world; but, on the con- 
trary, "the life that was in Him," we are told (John i. 4), "became 
the light of men." Hence we hear the Saviour Himself saying: " I 
am the Light of the world ; he that followeth me — makes himself 
one with the living Spirit of my person — shall not walk in darkness, 
but shall have the light of life." So St. Paul : " Ye were once dark- 
ness, but now are ye light in the Lord." To know Christ is to be 
in Christ ; to have part in His grace in any way, is to have part in 
His personal being. 

And hence it is that all forms of His grace, the benefits which He 
accomplishes for His people, are spoken of so commonly, not as 
outside gifts merely, the result of His ministerial teaching or work- 
ing, but as inhering actually in His own life. " I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life ; — I am the light of the world ; — I am the way, the 
truth, and the life; — I am the living bread which came down from 
heaven ; he that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him 
that sent me; and he that seeth me seeth Him that sent me; — He 
is our peace; — He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteous- 
ness, and sanctification, and redemption." Such is the characteristic 
tenor of this whole glorious Gospel of the blessed God, in speaking 
of its own power of salvation for the children of men. All is not 
only from Christ and by Him, but in Him and through Him also 



624 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

as the first-born from the dead, "the beginning of the creation of 
God " in this new form. " God hath given to us eternal life ; and 
this life is in His Son." 

3. Being in this way the only true light, the beginning and foun- 
dation of the whole Gospel, Jesus Christ must be Himself, of course, 
the great argument always of the truth of the Gospel, and of His 
own presence by means of it in the world. That is the nature of 
light: it demonstrates itself in demonstrating other things around 
it; and so the last proof of it in the end is only the evidence which 
in the first place streams forth from itself. How shall an} T one 
prove the existence of the sun, except by what the sun shows itself 
to be, shining in the heavens and illuminating the whole natural 
creation of God ? So does the Sun of Righteousness, in this new 
creation of which we now speak, authenticate and declare itself to 
be what it is, by the \Qvy fulness of its own indwelling light, with 
which it floods and irradiates all other things. How shall that 
which is itself the deepest and most comprehensive manifestation 
of truth in the world, be rendered clear and sure by any demonstra- 
tion from be} T ond itself? The self-revelation of God in Christ is 
for men the truth of all truth, the light of all light; and if known 
at all effectually, it must be known in and by Christ alone. Here 
emphatically the word holds good : " In Thy light we shall see 
light." This is that knowledge of which St. John speaks: "TTe 
know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness : 
we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under- 
standing, that we may know Him that is true ; and we are in Him 
that is true, in His Son, Jesus* Christ. This is the true God and 
Eternal Life." 

4. From all this it follows that the only true and sure way of 
Christian knoiuledge for us, at all times, is that Christological 
method of studying Christ and His Gospel, which is set before us in 
the old pattern of the Apostles' 1 Creed. It must be so, both for 
practical purposes and for the ends of theological- science. The 
art of growing in grace, and in the saving knowledge of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, holds especially in the habit of regarding His person 
with the steaclv contemplation of faith ; for in doing so, more than 
in an} T other way, our darkness is illuminated, our affections are 
purified, our will is made strong; and beholding His gloiy, as the 
Apostle has it, we are transformed into the same image, from glory 
to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. But what we wish just now 
to insist upon more especially, is the necessaiy application of the 
same canon to the science of Christian divinity, whose object it is 



Chap. XLVI] the undying life in Christ 625 

to expound and set forth theoretically the universal sense of the 
Gospel. If Jesus Christ be for Christianity what we have now 
seen that He is, the sum and substance personally of its whole 
constitution, then is it at once plain that Christianity never can be 
understood or preached to full purpose, except under that histor- 
ical view in which it is exhibited to us in the actual movement of 
His own theanthropic life and work. 

Our theology can never begin successfully from any other centre 
than that of the Incarnation ; there can be no safe footing for our 
speculative constructions of doctrine, beyond that which is offered 
to us immediately in the fact of the hypostatical union, regarded 
as the actual basis of the new creation to which it belongs. What 
is the real principle of Christianity itself must be for us the real 
principle also of its whole apprehension and representation. We 
must think ourselves into it everj^where, from that living, concrete 
ground, or else we shall have for our thoughts, in place of it, a 
metaphysical abstraction only, that will not deserve to be consid- 
ered true Christian theology at all. It will not do to build here on 
any philosophical dogma or hypothesis outside of Christ. It will 
not do to build, or rather to dream of building, even on the Scrip- 
tures themselves, outside of Christ ; for in Him alone all the prom- 
ises of God are Yea and Amen ; and it is the very spirit of Anti- 
christ to say, that they. can ever be the word of God truty for any 
man's thought or reason, except through the acknowledged pres- 
ence of the Word made flesh. The order is, Christ first, then the 
Bible ; and not the Bible first, then Christ. " t 0n this rock," our 
Saviour says, in answer to St. Peter's memorable confession, " I 
will build my Church ; " and that confession, let it be well consid- 
ered, is but the germ of the Apostles' Creed, as we find it after- 
wards unfolded with necessaiy development in the ancient Church. 

And now, then, it is no gain, we may be well assured, but an im- 
mense loss rather, that this old order of thought has grown strange 
to so much of our modern theology, and that so much of our theo- 
logical thinking — and along with this, unhappily, so much of our 
pulpit teaching — has come to move in another construction of 
Christianity altogether. No one who considers it properly can help 
feeling it to be an ominous fact, that the Creed has fallen in our 
time so largely into disuse and neglect. It argues a falling away, 
unquestionably, from the old stand-point of Christian observation 
— which we know at the same time to be the only one, if Christ 
Himself be real, that can be considered either true or safe. Let it 
sink deeply into our minds, brethren in the ministry especially, that 



626 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

all right Christian theology, in the very nature of the case, must be 
Christological theology; and that all right Christian preaching 
must be also Christological preaching; and that, being so, both 
must be cast prevailingly in the mould of the original Christian 
Creeds, which are all here of one signification and sense, since in 
no other form is it possible to deal with the facts of Christianity 
in a truly Christological way. 

5. One more thought, and I have done. The end of all Christian 
worship — the end of all Christianity for man — is living fellowship 
and communion with God through His Son Jesus Christ. What 
we all need, as we have seen, is not just good doctrine for the under- 
standing, or good direction for the will, or good motives for the 
heart, but the power rather of a new life, which, proceeding from 
God and being inserted into our fallen nature, may redeem us from 
the vanity of this present evil world, and make us to be in such 
sort "partakers of the divine nature" that in the end we niay be 
counted worth}- to have part also in the resurrection of the dead. 
This life we can never have directly for ourselves. God hath given 
it to us, we are told, onlv in His Son; and if we are to have part 
in it at all, therefore, it can be only in the way of derivation from 
His person. It is plain, at the same time, that this derivation can 
never be parted from its original source in Christ, so as to become 
for an}- one his own separate property and possession. " I live," 
St. Paul says, "3-et not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life 
which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of Gocl, 
who loved me, and gave himself for me." The life of the Christian 
thus requires to be nourished and fed continually from that same 
immortal spring out of which it has taken its start in the beginning; 
in signification of which, accordingly, the "washing of regenera- 
tion," as it is called, is to be followed constantly to the end b}- the 
use of that other sacrament which is called the "communion of the 
body and blood of Christ," as showing b}^ what aliment alone it is 
at last that this new existence is maintained in our souls. What 
the sacrament before us thus signifies and seals for our faith is the 
inmost meaning of Christianit}', and the one great object, as we 
have said, of all true Christian worship. 

We are here to-day, Christian brethren, in circumstances well 
suited to remind us of our common vanity. We are here to com- 
mune with the past, long buried, though not forgotten; and in 
doing so we are powerfully reminded how rapidlj- our years also 
are passing away. We shall never meet again, from all parts of the 
land, as we have been brought together on this jo}'ful but yet 



Chap. XLYI] the undying life in christ 627 

solemn occasion. Many of us will soon be gone to join those of 
our own generation, whose familiar forms, still fresh in our memory, 
seem to flit before us, even now, amid the solemnities of this hour; 
and it will not be long till all who are here shall have been swept 
away, in like manner, into the oblivious gulf of ages. For "we all 
do fade as a leaf; " "our days are as an hand-breadth, and our age 
is as nothing before God." "As for man, his days are as grass, 
and as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; for the wind passeth 
over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more." 

And now to this private vanity, which belongs to every one of us, 
must be joined the sense of that public political misery, by which 
the earth is made to tremble beneath our feet, and the very heavens 
above us seem ready to collapse in one universal crash of ruin over 
our heads. But in the midst of all these crushing and confounding 
thoughts, oh, what a word is that — dying brethren in the undying 
Christ — which, through these sacramental symbols of His broken 
body and shed blood, speaks now to our faith from His own lips ! 
— " Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal 
life; and I will raise him up at the last da}^. As the living Father 
hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, he 
shall live by me. This is that bread which came clown from heaven ; 
not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead : he that eateth of 
this bread shall live forever." It is the word of Him who is the 
Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation 
of God, and the first-begotten of the dead. Let us respond to it, 
from the fulness of our hearts, one and all: "Lord, evermore give 
us this bread." 

" And now, unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins 
in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God 
and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. 
Amen" 



CHAPTER XLVII 

IN the year 1866 the affairs of the College carne to a crisis, and 
under the direction of a mysterious Providence and the logic 
of events, Dr. Nevin was once more called to take charge of its in- 
terests as President. After the institution had been transplanted to 
Lancaster in 1853, it took root, began to grow, and gained the con- 
fidence of the community and of a large constituency throughout 
the Church. Dr. Cerhart had been indefatigable in the discharge of 
his duties, taught Rauch's Psycholog}^ and Christian Ethics with 
zeal, and prepared for the benefit of the students a translation of 
Beck's Logic, accompanied with an Introduction to the Study of 
Philosoph}^ in general. By his enthusiasm he gave a new impulse 
to the study of Logic, something needed, as it had, in some degree, 
been undervalued in the philosophical course of the College. 

The students showed the same zeal for the College as thej 7 had 
done at Mercersburg. Soon after they came to Lancaster they 
went to work and by their own exertions, mainly, erected for them- 
selves Halls for the Literary Societies, such as they had been accus- 
tomed to at Mercersburg. In this case the College building was 
first erected, and the two daughter buildings afterwards, which 
added very much to its appearance on the heights of Lancaster, 
commanding an extensive view of the county in all directions. 

In connection with these useful buildings, the endowment of the 
College was considerably enlarged during the war. — Elder Henry 
Leonard, merchant of Basil, Ohio, from a sense of duty to the 
Church, gave up his business and devoted all his time to increasing 
the endowment of the College and Seminary of the Reformed 
Church, at Tiffin, Ohio. After laboring in this wa}^ for awhile, his 
view of his call was enlarged, and by what he regarded as a kind 
of premonition, in something like a dream or vision, he came to 
believe that he had a Divine call to labor for the building up of the 
institutions of his Church in the East as well as the West. His 
services, accordingly, were secured as agent for Franklin and Mar- 
shall College, and during the 3'ears 1863 and 1864 he was successful 
in securing over $33,000 for the Eastern College. Under all the cir- 
cumstances of the case, this was regarded as a remarkable feat. It is 
an illustration of what a plain, unostentatious layman can accom- 
plish for the cause of Christ, b}^ energy and singleness of purpose. 

(628) 



Chap. XLYII] progress of the college 029 

The Faculty, when fully organized, consisted of faithful and indus- 
trious workers, and the College started out and went forward in a 
successful and prosperous career. Its graduates increased from 
year to year, and the training and culture, which they carried with 
them to their homes, compared favorably with that received in the 
best schools of learning of the country. The Institution held its 
own for some time during the war, but at length it had to succumb, 
in a considerable degree, to its demoralizing effects. Its large 
classes passed away, and those succeeding them became smaller 
each 3'ear. In 1862 the graduating class numbered 28, but in 1866 
the number was only six. Under the quickening influence of the 
establishment of peace, however, the friends of the College rallied, 
determined to give it a new impulse, not only to arrest apparent 
decline, but to impart to it a new inspiration if possible. Com- 
mittees were appointed to examine into its condition and wants. 
The conclusion arrived at was that the Institution needed many 
tilings to enable it to keep abreast of the times; and, as a matter of 
course, it was soon ascertained that, as in the case of most col- 
leges, it was sorely in want of pecuniary means to maintain itself. 

In 1853 it was supposed to be comparatively highly favored in 
this respect ; but times had changed, other institutions had been 
enriched ; and it was now believed that it was imperatively neces- 
sary that Franklin and Marshall should receive an increased en- 
dowment, so as fully to meet the growing demands of the times. 
It was easy to be seen that it needed more professors, more build- 
ings, more apparatus and better accommodations generally; but 
such advantages would cost moiie} 7 and a good deal of it too, and 
so very properly the financial question confronted the Trustees. 
At first it was thought that $50,000 would answer the purpose, 
but it soon began to be felt that it ought not to be less than $75,000. 
It did not, however, rest even at that figure. Dr. Wolff, with his 
usual enthusiasm, put it at $200,000, assuring the Board that the 
Church, and the friends of the institution, would respond and raise 
the amount. Peace had returned on balmy wings, the united 
country had already entered upon a new period of prosperit}^ 
and the schools of the Church must not lag behind, but go beyond 
all their previous achievements. So it was thought. 

The Board was satisfied with the limit, at least $200,000, set by 
those who seemed to know and mean what they said, and accord- 
ingh T it went on to consider how so large an amount of money was 
to be raised. That was the next question. As there was con- 
siderable free talk on the street about the Faculty, it was thought 



630 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

by some that it ought to be reconstructed, so that, if it could be 
made to please everybody, it would show that the Board was in 
earnest, and the appeal to the churches for money would meet with 
a more ready response. No sacrifices could be regarded as too 
great to secure the object in view. The Board could then with 
a better countenance present an inducement to the people to give 
of their means the more liberally. — It was moreover here again a 
thought cherished 03^ some few, that the character of the Faculty 
could in this way be materially changed, by removing those 
more closely identified with Dr. Nevin and his thoughts. If thus 
expurgated of its old leaven, it would be much improved, and the 
way be open for a new tendency, or rather an old one, which had 
been fighting to get the upper-hand all along. It had tried just 
this kind of tactics when the new Facult}^ was organized in 1853. 
It failed then, and so here it failed again in 1866. 

At a special meeting of the Trustees, on the 24th of January, 
the chairman of one of the committees in his report favored such 
a departure; on the 24th of May, at another special meeting, the 
chairman of another committee followed up this trail, and recom- 
mended that all the professorial chairs should be vacated on the 
31st of August following, so that no one might be in the wa}^ of 
filling them, according to the best judgment of the Trustees. This 
suggestion was adopted and a committee appointed to nominate 
candidates to fill the vacancy, who made a partial report, not being ♦ 
able to agree on candidates for several of the departments. It 
proposed that the former president should remain in his chair, but 
that Dr. Nevin should be appointed President Emeritus. It was 
alleged that such a nominal connection with the institution as 
this, carrying with it the strength of his great name, would be 
sufficient to give the necessaiy impulse to the endowment move- 
ment. 

Dr. Nevin, however, peremptoribv declined the honor proposed 
to be conferred on him in the report. It would end, he thought, 
in no practical results, and it might do harm by leading to useless 
complications. Besides, it seemed to iinply that he was already 
superannuated — in his declining strength — which was something he 
very decidedlj' repudiated and wished to correct. He was in the 
sixt3^-fourth year of his age, but as he said, he regarded himself 
as having only reached the meridian of his intellectual powers. 
Some persons opened their eyes at this speech and smiled. He was 
unwilling to be a mere figure-head, and did not have enough vanity 
to think that his name in itself possessed anj^ special virtue or magic 



Chap. XL VII] reorganization of the faculty 631 

about it. It was now felt that the members of the Board had been 
plunged into a wilderness, with no help from the chairmen of the 
committees who had gotten them into it b}^ their reports, and the 
question was how to get out of it. There was more or less con- 
fusion, in the midst of which the Board concluded to lay the sub- 
ject of filling the vacancies on the table until another adjourned 
meeting, which was to convene on the 28th of June following, by 
which time it was hoped that the skies might clear up. 

Pursuant to adjournment the Board met at the time specified. 
The standing committee on candidates had no report to make, and 
the Board itself took the matter in hand, and by resolution pro- 
ceeded to fill the vacancies in the Faculty in a very simple and con- 
siderate way. Instead of lopping oft' its extremities, it left them 
stand just where they were, and on motion again of the Hon. John 
W. Killinger, gave them a new head by electing Dr. Nevin bona 
fide President of the College, and placing his predecessor by his 
side as Yice-President, which meant an experienced practical helper 
in the management of the College. Thus the Faculty was recon- 
structed and became more efficient than ever before. This settle- 
ment of long standing difficulties in the College was not acceptable 
to everybody, of course, and least of all to such as were given to 
change; but it was generally satisfactory to its friends and the 
great part of the Church • and the choice of Dr. Nevin as President 
of the College created general enthusiasm. All hailed him back 
again in the public service of the Church with sincere pleasure; 
and his presence at the helm gave a new inspiration to the move- 
ment to place the Institution upon a better foundation. 

It was now more evident than before that the character, tenden- 
cies and general life of the College would remain as before, and 
that all attempts, however artful, to carry it forward under a dif- 
ferent spirit, for some time to come at least, would end in grief. 
The result here reached was a surprise to most persons, to Dr. 
Nevin no less than to the Faculty and others. Previous to these 
adjourned meetings no persons thought of placing him at the head 
of the College; and, if it had been proposed, he would have very 
positively discouraged it. It was well known that he wished to 
live in comparative retirement, and it was thought that he could 
not be induced to change his mind in that respect. The action of 
the Board implied no reflection upon the efficiency or ability of the 
former president nor of the Faculty itself. It was due to the force 
of circumstances, or, more reverently speaking, to the hand of Prov- 
idence that directs all things, and brings order out of confusion 



632 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

iu our clay no less than at the beginning of all things. — During this 
period of chaos the Board of Trustees as a whole had a clear and 
intelligent view of the situation, and generously supported the 
Faculty. They had been faithful, and with most persons they had 
earned for themselves reputations for scholarship and fidelity to 
their trust. If attacked at the hotel or on the street, Ex-President 
Buchanan in particular was read} 7 to vouch for them, and told the 
talkers plainly that he knew the Professors, and that they would 
have to search far and wide before they could find substitutes as 
competent as they to fill their places. They were quite pleased with 
such a spontaneous endorsement — laudari a viro laudato — and 
they never forgot his generous service. Years afterwards as they 
passed his grave in the Woodward Hill Cemetery, their thoughts 
reverting to the support he gave them in the Board or elsewhere, 
they blessed his memory and prayed that he might rest in peace. 

During this crisis in the affairs of the College, the Faculty lost 
one of its ablest Professors. Dr. Thomas C. Porter, known far 
and wide as one of the most distinguished botanists in this coun- 
try, endowed with a fine literary taste as an author and poet, and 
an eloquent preacher, who had filled his place for manj^ j-ears in 
the College at Mercersburg and Lancaster with ability, influenced 
to some extent, at least, by the troubles in the Board of Trustees, 
accepted of an appointment as Professor in Lafaj-ette College, 
Easton, Pa., his alma mater, and sundered the ties which bound 
him to the institutions at Lancaster. What was their loss was a 
gain elsewhere. 

When Dr. Nevin's name was brought forward in the Board as a 
last resort in the reorganization of the Faculty, he was at a loss to 
know what to sa} T , and so said nothing; but sat quietly observing 
the surging movements around him. He was assured that in the 
emergency it had become a necessity that he should take his place 
at the head of the College, in order to allay the contentions in the 
Board, as well as to inaugurate a general movement throughout the 
Church to place the College on a better basis. At first he hesitated 
and was in doubt, but he soon received letters from influential min- 
isters and laymen in all parts of the Church, earnestl}' entreating 
him by all means to accept -of the position tendered to him by the 
Board, and assuring him that, if he did, the Church would rally 
and fall in freely with the endowment movement. Such a call as 
this caused him to feel that he could not shrink altogether from 
what appeared to him to be the call of duty ; and accordingly he 
sent the following letter to the Board, at its annual meeting in July 



Chap. XLVII] dr. nevin's letter 633 

a few weeks afterwards, in which he defined his position and of- 
fered his services to the College provisionally, in a form which was 
the result of earnest thought and reflection. 

"I acknowledge," he writes, "thankfully the honor which the 
Board has been pleased to confer upon me in calling me a second 
time to the Presidency of Franklin and Marshall College ; and as 
the reasons I had for declining the office some years ago have no 
longer the same force, whilst the circumstances in which the call is 
renewed are such as to give it new weight, I do not feel myself at 
liberty, however much I may still shrink from its responsible cares, 
to turn it aside in the same absolute way. It is placed before me 
as a part of a general movement, by which it is proposed to enlarge 
the operations of the Institution on a scale answerable to the wants 
of the present time, a movement which contemplates first of all an 
addition, at least of $200,000, to its endowment as it now stands. It 
is said that the success of this movement depends on my being 
placed at the head of the College, and that without my name in 
such position it cannot be carried forward with effect. Too much 
account is made of my name, I am afraid, in this view; but where, 
in a case like this, so much importance is attached to it by others, 
a sort of necessity is placed upon me not to withhold it from the 
service of so worthy an enterprise. 

" I therefore consent to co-operate with the friends of the Insti- 
tution in carrying out the plan proposed for its enlargement, by 
accepting provisionally and conditionally the office of President to 
which I am now called. I say provisionally and conditionally ; for 
I am not willing to be bound in the case, beyond what may be 
found to be the readiness of others also, to do what is needed for 
the accomplishment of the work in hand. I am quite willing to 
join with others in trying to give the College new life and force; 
but others also must join with me in the large and arduous task. 
Without this, my name and service will not avail to rescue the In- 
stitution from comparative insignificance. There must be strong 
and full' co-operation from all sides in its favor during the coming 
year; and on this, I wish it to be well understood, must hang in 
the end the question of my full and formal acceptance of the honor- 
able situation now offered to me by the Board." 

As in 1841, so in 1866, Dr. Nevin became only a provisional 
President of the College, not more than a temporary supply at the 
time. He therefore did not regard it as incumbent on him to be 
inducted formally into office or to deliver a formal inaugural ad- 
dress. As, however, a desire was expressed from different quarters, 
40 



634 AT LANCASTER ER0M 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

that the resumption of his old office should be marked by a gen- 
eral " comprehension or gathering up," as he expressed it, " of the 
past in the present," he according!}', at the Commencement of 1867, 
delivered a Baccalaureate Address, first to the Graduating Class 
and then to the Alumni in general. It was published in the Octo- 
ber number of the Mercer sburg Review, — -which had died out in 
1861 during the troubles of the war; but now, in consequence of 
the new life and energy displayed at Lancaster, and in most parts 
of the country, it was revived at the beginning of the year 1867, un- 
der the vigorous editorship of Dr. Henry Harbaugh, successor of 
Dr. Wolff in the Seminary at Mercersburg. 

It is an interesting document, showing the state of Dr. Xevin's 
mind at this epoch. His period of comparative retirement had pass- 
ed away, and now he reappears on the public stage once more, full of 
courage and faith, coming forth, as it were, from his chamber, rejoic- 
ing like a strong man to run another race. During the war his mind 
had suffered great tribulation. Society seemed to him to be going 
backwards into chaos, and for a time he did not think the central 
government possessed the requisite ability to restore order or the 
Union. With other earnest men in the Xorth, for a time, he thought 
that the only way out of encompassing difficulties was to say to 
the "wayward sisters" of the South, depart in peace. The basis, 
however, of his famil}' life was faith in the Union, and when his 
two sons, William Wilberforce and Robert Jenkins, bravelv enter- 
ed the army his S3 T mpathies were deeply aroused, and he dismissed 
them with a father's prayers. Probably there were few, who prayed 
at all, who prayed more fervently for the success of the govern- 
ment in bringing order out of confusion. When he therefore wit- 
nessed the recuperative energies of the Americans, drawn from 
their reserve force, he himself became so much stronger in mind, 
and this shows itself to an extent quite exhilarating and invigora- 
tive, in his " Concio ad Alumuos " at the Commencement of 1867. 
— The Address is here given in full. 

Young Gentlemen: — Just fourteen years have elapsed since I 
stood in this place to speak my parting words to the last Senior 
Class of the old Marshall College, which was at the same time the 
first Senior Class of the new consolidated institution, into which 
the old college had become merged in this place. That solemn pub- 
lic act closed, as I then thought final^, the relation in which I had 
stood to the college as its President through previous years; and 
in view of this fact, it seemed proper to make my farewell to the 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 635 

graduating class a sort of general farewell to all who had ever been 
under my care as students. The Baccalaureate became in this way 
an oration to the Alumni. A desire has been expressed from differ- 
ent quarters, that the resumption of nvy old office should be marked 
on this occasion by a similar comprehension or gathering up of the 
past in the present; and you will not therefore take it amiss, if my 
address to you now, as the first graduating class under my new 
term of service, be so widened and enlarged in its scope as to take 
the form of a fatherly address to all who have gone forth from the 
institution, whether actually present here to-day or not — both the 
older generation of students from the classic shades of Mercersburg, 
and the later succession that has been added to these veteran ranks 
from the halls of Franklin and Marshall here in Lancaster. Into 
this general brotherhood, this goodly fellowship of kindred academic 
life, you have been solemnly ushered by the honors of this Com- 
mencement Da}\ I see 3 T ou before me now as part of the great 
family which has thus received you into its bosom ; and as the organ 
of 3^our common alma mater, what I have to say to you farther, at 
the present time, I say to all. 

To you then, Sons of the College at large, the representatives of 
its life through thirty years, I now turn my address. In doing so, 
however, the old familar compellation of the baccalaureate falls help- 
less to the ground. I can no longer address you as Young Gentle- 
men. Most of you at least have outgrown that title. It will no 
longer fit especially the students of Mercersburg. In my mind's 
eye, indeed, they are still young; and I seem to renew the vigor of 
my own life, when I call to remembrance the youthful forms, replete 
with the generous spirit of youth, in which they passed before me, 
with daily familiar intercourse, in former years. Need I say, my be- 
loved Pupils, that it is an easy illusion with me, in the midst of such 
retrospective contemplation, to think of you still as "bo} ;r s,"and 
thus almost to ■ forget the present in the past ? I doubt not but 
that at times you are yourselves borne away by the power of the 
same illusion; and that amid the festivities in particular of your 
present Alumni Reunion, you have been tempted to look upon it 
as not only your privilege, but your right, to be boys again in the 
fullest and best sense of the term. 

But the fancy is too bold; and it is best that we keep it, 3^ou and 
I, to our own hearts. You are no longer boys; allow me to say it 
in all seriousness, you are no longer even young gentlemen, in the 
common acceptation of the address. It would sound ludicrous to 
this audience, not knowing you as I do, to hear you characterized 



636 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

by any such title. M} T own eyes, as I gaze upon you, correct with 
rude shock the fond hallucination of my feelings in regard to the 
point. You are not yet any of you old men, properly speaking ; 
but you are all fast becoming old ; and it will require onl} T a few 
3 T ears — years that will pass, O,how quickly — to advance you all to 
the gray-haired dignity of fathers, in the generation which has here- 
tofore known you only as scms. I say this primarily of the old 
Mercersburg students. But the first classes of Lancaster are, of 
course, pressing hard after them, in the same career of age; and all 
of you together know that the dreams of youth are forever behind 
3*ou, that the stern realities of life are around you, that its respon- 
sible burdens are full upon you, and that what lies before you is no 
longer play nor preparation, but the long, laborious work of earnest 
and full-grown men. 

I do not address you to-day then as young men. It is not right 
that either you or I should forget, or try to forget, the course of 
time in which we are solemnly involved. The present occasion, 
rightly improved, cannot fail to bring home to us the fact that we 
are getting old ; and to remind us how far we have come and where 
we now stand, in the great world movement to which we belong. 
Rightly improved, however, it cannot fail also to rejuvenate and 
freshen the sense of the present by the wholesome recollection of 
the past. I would not have you forget your college daj-s. You 
have no wish yourselves to forget them. I would not have you 
forget that you were once boys. There is a natural piet} T , here, as 
Wordsworth terms it, which should ever bind our manhood to our 
childhood and boj^hood, our later to our earlier life; and without 
which, we have full reason to say, our later life can never be either 
solid or sound. The bo} r is in a profound sense father to the man ; 
and the vigor of a true man, be well assured, on even to green old 
age, depends largely on the power he has to cany along with him 
the spirit of his boyhood to the last. Cherish in such view the 
memories that are made to crowd upon you on this anniversary 
occasion. Give room to your 3'outhful feelings. They cannot 
make you young again, in the old outward way in which 3 r ou were 
once young. But they may help at least to keep 3-ou } T oung at 
heart; which is something far better; better for yourselves; and 
better also for the world in which you are called to work. 

A retrospective view of life is in any circumstances interesting 
and instructive. But it becomes especiaLVv so, where the period 
it overlooks is found to be of great public significance, added to 
the meaning it ma}^ have for ourselves separately considered. In 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 637 

such view, let me refer again to the interval which has passed since 
my last address to the graduates of Marshall College spoken from 
this place in 1853. As a period simply of fourteen years, it may 
not seem to amount to much in the general chronology of the 
world, whatever serious changes we may feel it to have brought 
with it for each one of us, in our own persons and in our immediate 
personal surroundings. But look at these fourteen years again, 
in what they have brought to pass for this nation, and for 'the his- 
tory of the world, and tell me what language is sufficient to express 
properly their momentous import. The distance which separates 
us to-day from the first Commencement of Franklin and Marshall 
College in 1853, is but feebly represented by any such brief chro- 
nological measure as this. It is a period, in which, as we look back 
upon it, days seem to lose their ordinary sense, and the flight of 
weeks is turned into the flight of years. It is more for each one of 
us, immeasurably, than the simple change it has wrought in our 
own age. 

In the general movement of the world, we have lived scores, I 
had almost said centuries of years, in passing through it. For the 
life of the world, as we know, does not run forward with equal con- 
tinuous stream ; there are times with it, when the slow course of 
ages gathers itself up, as it were, into the compass of moments, and 
the meaning of a thousand years is precipitated into the rush of a 
few days. Then it is that the far past and the far future, the " ends 
of the ages " as St. Paul calls them, seem to meet and come together 
in the instantaneous present. Of such character, most emphatically, 
is the period here under consideration, the brief space of time that 
has passed since I last stood before you as now in the summer of 
1853. Since then, the index-hand on the dial-plate of the world's 
history has swept an arc, which may be said fairly to confound all 
human calculation. The sense of ages has come into view through 
our late American war, and is now pouring itself forward with cat- 
aract force in its mighty issues and consequences — political, moral, 
social, economic, scientific, and religious — as never in any like 
period of the world's life before. 

Regarded simply as an act in the drama of our own national ex- 
istence, the political struggle through which we have passed must 
be acknowledged to be the grandest that has ever had place among 
men. The world has never before known such a war ; the life and 
death struggle of such a nation as this, caught suddenly in the 
anaconda folds of so vast a rebellion, born from its own bosom; a 
war of such huge proportions, carried forward on so broad a field, 



638 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

and hurried through to such overwhelming results in so short a 
period of time. For the nation itself, of course, the importance of 
it, in its relations to the past and in its bearings on the future, is 
beyond all description, and indeed as yet bej^ond all knowledge or 
imagination. All that m&y have been new or great, or full of inter- 
est, in the previous history of the county: its discovery more 
than three centuries ago ; its colonies and colonial times ; its war of 
independence ; the foundation and adoption of its constitution ; and 
whatever has been of account in the enlargement of its resources 
or in the development of its powers since ; all is found at last, I 
say, gathering itself up into' the grandeur of this last crisis, and 
showing itself to have been significant only as it has served to 
prepare the way for its advent. 

Here, in a most profound sense, it may be said that a nation has 
been born in a clay. For all that had place before in the life of 
these United States deserves to be considered, and spoken of, as 
little better than an embiyonic existence, over against the new or- 
der of being we have been ushered into through the mighty parturi- 
tion pains and throes of the late war. Whatever we may have 
thought of the war itself during its progress, now that it is over, 
if we have any faith in the future of the nation at all, we cannot 
possibly fail to see in it the presence of a power, which must deter- 
mine our character and destiny as a people, in the most universal and 
radical way, for all time to come. It is in vain to disguise it ; we 
have passed through a revolution ; or shall I not say rather, we are 
still in the midst of a revolution, greater than an}^ yet known to 
the nations of Europe; greater altogether than that from which our 
political freedom dates in 1716; a revolution wrought out organic- 
ally from the inmost forces of the national life, which in such view 
amounts to a regeneration, profound and deep as the foundations 
of this life itself. Well may we bow before it with wondering, awe- 
struck admiration ; for it is the wonder of all wonders in these last 
times. It has been to the nation like the baptism of the Red Sea. 
Old things have been made to pass away Iry it; and now, lo, all 
things are becoming new. 

How much this revolution means becomes still more evident, 
when we take into view, in connection with it, the way in which the 
conditions and terms of our national life, externally considered, 
are found to correspond with it; so demanding and requiring it, as 
it now seems, that it is hard to see how the}^ could have been met 
and satisfied in any other way. It is in the light of such correspond- 
ences especially, springing from the depths,. and coming, as it were, 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 639 

from the farthest ends of the earth, that the hand of God reveals 
itself in history. Without dwelling upon the subject at large, let it 
suffice now to say, that this nation, as we believe, was planted and 
kept apart in the Western world for high purposes peculiar to it- 
self; that it has not been possible for it, in the conditions in which 
it has heretofore stood, to obey its vocation or mission successfully 
thus far under its first relatively defective organization; that with 
its own growth, however, and the progress of things generally, this 
was becoming more and more impracticable; when all at once, and 
as it were to meet the emergency, the political crisis before us 
burst forth in fire and blood, making room for a new ordering of 
the State, which, it is to be hoped, will be found answerable to its 
enlarged necessities and responsibilities in all time to come. 

Our late war has been for us, in this view, immeasurably more 
than the simple putting down of the rebellion from which it sprung. 
It has borne us through the pillars of Hercules, out into the broad 
ocean of life, of which we had no conception before. It has roused 
us, as a people, to self-consciousness; lifted us into manhood; 
brought home to us the sense of our own resources; and given us 
a history, it has been well said, "which even the war powers of the 
old world must respect and acknowledge as a title to the fellowship 
of great nations." It has brought us suddenly abreast with the 
great moving forces of the age, and compelled us to hold ourselves 
in line with them from this time onward, as the necessary condition 
of our whole future existence. It has settled the question of our 
national unity, before always more or less problematical and un- 
certain. It has tested the strength and stability of our republican 
constitution, and demonstrated the possibility of popular self-gov- 
ernment on a scale, and to an extent, beyond all that it had en- 
tered into the heart of man hitherto to imagine or conceive. 

We are fairly bewildered and lost, in trying to take in the measure 
of our present greatness, the momentum of our present onward 
course, as compared with all we have been before. The colossal 
proportions of our late war have made the nation all at once gigan- 
tic. The popular mind has grown familiar with gigantic thoughts, 
gigantic purposes, and gigantic deeds. We are ready to bridge the 
Hellespont, or tunnel Mount Athos, at a moment's warning. Never 
before has the world seen or heard of such wonders of energy and 
strength, as have attended, and are now still following, the four 
years' struggle through which we have passed. They have dis- 
tanced all comparison, confounded all calculation, turned all pre- 
cedent to confusion and shame. No wonder that the hoary state 



640 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

craft of Europe is made to stand aghast, at what might seem to be 
so universal a breaking away from old time formulas and rules ; for 
here, emphatically, all the traditions of the past are found to be at 
fault. Our public debt, in this view, is sublime; and still more so, 
of course, our public credit maintained thus far through it all, and 
the stupendous fiscal administration which is moving steadily on- 
ward, in conjunction with the free pleasure of the people, to its full, 
speedy liquidation. 

And more sublime, in some respects, even than the war itself, is 
the work of political reorganization now in progress, by which the 
nation is to be formed and fitted for the career of glory that now 
stretches before it, with seemingly interminable prospect, through 
the far distant future. Of this coming greatness, what tongue can 
adequately speak? How can we reflect on the truly continental 
character which has come even now to invest all the elements of 
our growth; the rebounding vitality, the feeling of endless strength, 
the sense of inward enlargement, with which we have come out from 
our Briarean struggle ; our might}- territory, reaching from sea to 
sea; the rate at which our population is increasing every year by 
the natural law of birth ; the incalculable tide of immigration (a 
more important Vblherwanderung than any the world has ever 
witnessed before), by which the life of all European nationalties is 
now to be poured into our bosom in a way as yet hardly dreamed 
of by any; the new fields of untold, unimaginable wealth, on the 
earth and under the earth, which are soon to make our national 
debt seem lighter than a feather ; the victories of art over nature 
on all sides among us, b}^ which mountains are leveled and valle3 T s 
raised before the march of modern improvement, by which time 
and distance are more and more surmounted, and the compact unity 
of the country is made to keep pace fully, and even more than fully, 
with its greatest geographical expansion: how, I say, can we reflect 
on all this (crossing the continent, for example, with the eloquently 
thoughtful eye of a Colfax), and not feel ourselves absolutely over- 
whelmed by the solemn sense of what is around us, the thrilling 
apprehension of what is before us, in the present condition of our 
country ! 

But to estimate properly what this condition involves, we must 
take into consideration more than these relatively outward elements 
and forces, as concerned in the working out of the problem it brings 
to our view. There are concerned in what is thus going forward, 
at the same time, the historical forces of the world's modern mind 
and thought, the issues of its past science, the results of its past 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 641 

morality and religion, the deepest instincts of its present spiritual 
life, its profonndest political ideas — in a word, we may say, the in- 
most philosophy of the age. These spiritual and moral forces, now 
deeply at work ever} 7 where in our modern civilization, no less, I 
say, than the more outward powers before spoken of, are tending 
with accumulating strength toward the introduction of a new order 
of life for the world at large, a new era altogether in the world's 
social and political history; and in doing so, it is plain that they 
are throwing themselves more and more, with united volume, into 
the onward, moving destiny of our A r ast American Republic. 

Here they are to have their central field of action. Here only 
they are to find full outlet for their impetuous tide, and free com- 
mensurate scope for its overflowing course in time to come. We feel 
all this sensibly now, as never before, in the grand political epoch 
which has come upon us within the last few } 7 ears; and this especi- 
ally it is, that makes the epoch beyond expression solemn, as gather- 
ing up in itself the sense of centuries past, and carrying in its womb 
at the same time the sense of centuries yet unborn. Here now, it 
would seriousty seem, are to be settled and solved the great life 
questions, that are becoming more and more the burden of human- 
ity, the mystery of the last days, the ominous approximation of the 
present order of the world to its full winding up in the second 
coming of Christ. 

In all that has now been said, we are made to feel the prospective 
greatness of this country in a way it might have seemed extrava- 
gant to dream of only a few years ago; and can thus apprehend, in 
the light of it, the unutterable, illimitable significance of what has 
lately come to pass in our history. The curtain is suddenly lifted 
before our eyes, revealing to us an entirely new scheme in the drama 
of our national existence, and opening to our astonished gaze a vista 
of coming wonders more marvellous than the wildest creations of 
Arabian tale or of Persian romance. The nation is shut up, we now 
see plainly, by the very conditions of its existence, to a career and 
destination without any sort of parallel in the history of the Old 
World. The massive kingdoms of Asia, and the more thoroughly 
organized governments of Europe, are to be repeated here in a form 
that shall be found to unite in itself the highest ideal of both — 
political mass, in the widest and largest view, actuated throughout 
by the unity of free, intelligent soul. For the country, it would 
now seem to be providentially ordained, must remain one, in spite 
of all territorial extension. This at once sunders it from all trans- 
atlantic examples. It can be no second England, or German}', or 



642 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

France; just as little as it can reiterate the ancient life of Greece 
or Rome. 

Then, with boundless territory, must come, also, boundless pop- 
ulation , a tide of life that shall outswell now all past rates of 
growth; rising and spreading with magic rapidity; sweeping, roll- 
ing, rushing over the broad, reclaimed wastes of the sunny South, 
and over the prairies, forests, and sierras of the mighty West; 
millions upon millions, a multitude which no man can number. 
And along with this again, in simultaneous progression, a corre- 
sponding development of material resources and power; wealth 
springing out of the earth, and flowing through the rivers, and 
bursting from the mountains on every side ; cities in magnificent 
profusion; the vast arteries of commerce and trade, together with 
the nerves of electric intelligence, reaching over the continent in all 
directions, and binding it together with the sense of common inter- 
est, and the consciousness of common life. 

Westward, of a truth, the star of empire, the march of civiliza- 
tion, takes its way; and having now passed round the globe, the 
movement would appear to have come really to its conclusion here 
in touching the shores of the Pacific, while the historical course of 
the centuries, at the same time, is precipitating itself, with strange 
synchronistic coincidence, upon the same continental theatre; to 
work out, as it were, what St. Peter calls the "end of all things," 
on a scale answerable to the dimensions of so vast a problem. For 
no one can imagine, surely, that our American life, or the life of 
the world rather, in this, its last form, can ever advance upon itself, 
by entering upon a new circuit of civilization and culture in Asia. 
Thus far, and no farther ! is the law prescribed for it by the 
Pacific Ocean. 

Here the end has come round again to the beginning; the his- 
torical ages have run their predestined course; the extremities look 
each other in the face; the dumb prophecy of China, holding in 
stagnation, since the days of Confucius, well-nigh half the popula- 
tion of the globe, is confronted at last with its own far-off fulfilment 
(though without understanding it), in what are soon to be the mul- 
titudinous millions of these United States — a population equal to 
its own, not Mongolian, but Caucasian, in the latest stjde of this 
dominant race, with all its energies developed in full force, and 
brought into universal action. All things conspire plainly to show 
here the presence of the last times, and to proclaim the coming in, 
on a grand scale, of what must be considered the closing scene of 
the world's history, in its present order and form. 



Chap. XLVII] commencement address 643 

The interests of the whole world thus are bound up in what has 
been going forward of late in our own country; and we are made to 
feel solemnly that the national crisis through which we are now pass- 
ing is, in very truth, a world crisis, greater and more decisive than 
any the world has ever previously known. It is no longer the dream 
of American vanity, simply to speak of the significance of America 
in this way. It is fast becoming sober earnest for the nations of 
Europe themselves. Our late war was echoed in the universal 
heart of the Old World, and met responsive vibrations everywhere 
in its conflicting opinions, sympathies, and wishes; as the issue of 
it, also, has entered deeply into the soul of all countries, and is al- 
ready working out consequences which no foresight of man can 
measure or reveal. 

In a profound sense, the struggle was representative for the race 
at large. The tread of its armies, the thunder of its battles, shook 
the entire earth, and wrought deliverance for humanity such as has 
never been wrought by the agency of war before. In the language 
of Professor Goldwin Smith's late brilliant address in England : 
" Not the fields on which Greek intellect and art were saved from 
the Persian ; not the fields on which Roman law and politj' were 
saved from the Carthaginian and the Gaul; not the plains of Tours, 
on which Charles Martel rolled back Islam from the heart of 
Christendom; not the waters over which the shattered Armada 
fled; not Leipsic and Lutzen, Marston and Naseby, where, at the 
hands of Gustavus and Cromwell, the great reaction of the seven- 
teenth century found its doom, will be so consecrated by the grati- 
tude of after ages as Yicksburg, Gettysburg, Atlanta, and those 
lines before Richmond which saw the final blow." 

All with us now, as a nation, has been, and still continues to be, 
world-historical in the fullest sense of the term. We know it, and 
feel it, more and more continually, on all sides. Our thinking and 
working have come to be of boundless signification for the human 
race. The greatest questions of life, the last problems of history, 
are fast crowding upon us for their solution. Here is to be settled, 
on a grand scale, how far men are capable of self-government in a 
truly free way ; how far the interests of public authority and per- 
sonal independence can be made to meet harmoniously in the same 
political system. Here is to be issued and adjudicated practical^ 
the old arch-controversy, between the rights of man, as they are 
called, and the duties of man. Here are to be met, and answered 
in some way, the tremendous politico-economical and social prob- 
lems, which are even now stirring the lowest depths of our modern 



644 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

civilization, and threatening like a subterranean mine to blow it 
into ten thousand fragments. Here is to be resolved the great eth- 
nological question, which is to determine finally the relation of the 
inferior races to the Caucasian in the consummation of the world's 
history. Here is to be seen, how far material prosperity and mere 
humanitarian culture (the life of man in the order of nature) can be 
made to follow their own law, in harmony with the higher interests 
of virtue, morality, and religion. Here are to be shown, in the end, 
we must believe, the mightiest achievements of science, the greatest 
wonders of art, the most stupendous victories in the service of com- 
merce and trade. Above all in interest for us, here must be settled 
the great ecclesiastical issues, with which the whole Christian world 
is wrestling at the present time, and which are felt by thousands 
everywhere to involve nothing less than the question of life or 
death for the universal cause of Christianity itself. 

Yes, my beloved hearers, there is no room now I think to doubt 
it. Here on this Western Continent is to be the arena where the 
Church Question, which all truly earnest men feel and know to be 
the greatest question of the age, is to be fought out, if I ma}^ use 
the expression, to its last consequences and results. We cannot 
take our answer to it quietly from the Romanism, or Anglicanism? 
nor the Continental Protestantism of transatlantic Europe ; nor } T et 
from the Grraeco-Russian and other forms of Christianity, that chal- 
lenge our attention in the far East. On the contrary, these older 
church interests, if the3 r are to maintain their standing in the world, 
must throw themselves into the new conditions of our American 
life, and prove themselves able to master them, and to bend them 
to their own service in a free way. Christianity here, of course, if 
it is to remain true to itself, can never cease to be historical ; can 
never abjure its connection with the past ; as it is required to do 
by the radical sects that are continuall}- springing up like mush-, 
rooms on its path. 

But neither, on the other hand, can it be a mere mechanical out- 
ward tradition. It must enter into active struggle with the seeth- 
ing elements around it, and assert its necessary form, whatever 
that may be, as the "law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." 
Here then the controversy betweeen Christ and Antichrist, the 
mystical battle of Armageddon, must be waged to its ultimate de- 
cision. That is to be, of course, a struggle between faith and un- 
belief. But the unbelief, we have reason to be sure, will not be so 
much open infidelity, as the false show of faith itself — the meta- 
morphosis of Satan into an angel of light, opposition to the Gos- 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 645 

pel claiming to be the truth and power of the Gospel in its fullest 
sense. 

And so the ultimate matter in debate will not just be : Is the 
Bible true and worthy of confidence as God's word ? but this 
rather : Is Christ real, as the perpetual presence of a new creation 
in the world through which only life and immortality are brought 
to light ? The war will fall back practically to the basis of all pos- 
itive Christianity, as we have it set forth comprehensively in the 
Apostles' Creed. The questions will be at bottom : Is the Creed 
true ? Has Christ come in the flesh, as is there affirmed ? Is what 
we are told of the grand movement of the work of redemption in 
His Person, fact or figment? Did He indeed go down into death 
and hades, that He might return again leading captivity captive, 
and ascend up on high so as to fill all things, and to become head 
over all things to the Church ? Is there in virtue of all this an or- 
der of grace in the world — the mystery the Creed proclaims in its 
article of the Church — a divine constitution of life and power tran- 
scending the whole order of nature ; which as such is a necessary 
object of Christian faith ; which the gates of hell can never prevail 
against ; and in which alone are comprehended the redemption and 
salvation of the world through all time ? 

These are questions that go to the very foundation of Chris- 
tianity; and the issue involved in them is nothing less than the 
general right of Christianity to be regarded as a strictly supernat- 
ural system of religion, over against all forms of natural or simply 
humanitarian religion, usurping its name and pretending to stand 
in its place. It will be, in one word, the old battle between ration- 
alism and faith, the powers of this present world and the powers 
of the world to come, advanced now to its deepest, most inward 
and most universal form ; on which will be found to be staked the 
truth of all revelation from the beginning ; and which in its last 
grand crisis shall serve to usher in, we may trust, the bright ap- 
pearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, when He 
shall come to be gloried in His saints and admired in all them that 
believe. 

All signs, thus, herald the approach of a new era in the history 
of the world, more important than any which has gone before ; and 
all conditions join to show, that this era is to have its central de- 
velopment here, on this Western Continent, and in the bosom of 
our American Republic. But now, what view are we to take of the 
elements, agencies, and forces — political, moral, educational, and 
scientific — which are marshalling themselves on such vast scale, on 



646 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

all sides, for the accomplishment of the might} T change that is thus 
before us ; and what judgment are we to form of their relation 
ultimately to that "end of all things," in which the cause of Chris- 
tianity, if it be of God, is to come to its final and complete tri- 
umph, as we have just seen, over all opposing powers ? No inquiry 
can well be more interesting or practically solemn than this, how- 
ever difficult, for all who look thoughtfully at the present condition 
of the world, and desire in view of it to order their own lives to 
the wisest and best purpose. I can only glance at the subject now 
in the most general and cursory way. 

In the view of niany, the revolutionaiy forces which are now 
everywhere at work in our modern civilization, causing old things 
to pass away and all things to become new, are themselves, not 
simply precursive, but in the fullest sense preformative, of what is 
to be at last the deliverance of <the world from its present state of 
bondage and sin. The redemption of humanity is to be reached, 
they suppose, through these powers working themselves out to 
their own natural results. They see in the political, social, scien- 
tific, and educational movements of the age, the very factors of the 
world's final regeneration; and fondly dream and talk of a "good 
time coming," a millennium near at hand, in which the last sense 
of Christianity shall be reached, and the tabernacle of God made 
to be with men ; through the triumphs of mind over matter ; by 
means of steamships, Atlantic telegraphs and Pacific railroads ; 
by universal civil freedom, universal knowledge, universal brother- 
hood of races and nations, universal politico-economical wisdom — 
making altogether a reign of mundane righteousness, that will show 
itself a reign, at the same time, of boundless outward prosperity, 
comfort, and wealth. 

It is easy especially to be carried away with this sort of think- 
ing, in looking at the momentous changes, which are going forward 
in our own country, world-significant as they can be seen plainly 
to be at the present time, and profoundly linked as they are no less 
plainly with the central power of the world's life in the form of 
morality and religion. All must feel that the power of Christianity 
is deeply at work in these wonders. All must feel, that if Chris- 
tianity be the end of the ways of God among men, these wonders 
cannot possibly be without reference to the coming of His king- 
dom — that they are in fact progressive victories and gains on the 
side of this kingdom, which are serving to make room more and 
more for its full ultimate advent. And then what more natural 
than to see in them at once the actual presence of Christianity it- 



Chap. XLYII] ' commencement address 64t 

self, working in them and through them immediately to its own 
ends, as something identical with their first and nearest significa- 
tion ; and thus to take them as being, in and of themselves, true 
manifestations of faith and righteousness in the highest Christian 
sense of these terms. 

Thus loyalty and patriotism are made to be synonymous with 
devotion to the service of God ; battle-fields become the gate of 
entrance into paradise ; heroes are canonized into saints ; martyrs 
of liberty are exalted into martyrs of Christ ; statesmen and poli- 
ticians put themselves forward as the chosen prophets of God's 
will ; and the march of events (though it may be but John Brown's 
soul marching on — God only knows whither), is trumpeted to the 
four winds of heaven as the stately goings of Jehovah Jesus Him- 
self, riding forth prosperously to subdue the nations under His 
feet. 

Thus in every w&y the successful appliances of science, art, busi- 
ness, or politics, to the well-being of men in the present world, are 
counted to be directly the power of the everlasting Gospel fulfilling 
with free course its own heavenly mission ; and so it comes to pass 
that the power of the Gospel, the cause of true evangelical religion, 
is supposed at last to reside mainly in the world under its secular 
character, on the outside of the Church and her sacraments alto- 
gether. Creeds and confessions serve but to retard the chariot of 
salvation. The enemies of Christianity claim to be its heroes and 
apostles, its truest representatives and its best expounders ; and 
the nominally Christian world, alas, is found only too willing on 
all sides to admit the claim. 

This, I say, is the great temptation of the age — the temptation 
of resolving the whole idea of God's kingdom in the world into the 
powers and forces of the world itself, stirred and set in motion by 
the presence of the higher life that has been brought down into it, 
without being lifted still into its true sphere. So it was in the 
beginning of Christian^ in a more outward way, when all the ele- 
ments of Grecian and Oriental thought were roused by it to the 
task of constructing new philosophies, Gnostic and Platonic, that 
might take its place, and do for it, better than itself, its Heaven- 
commissioned work. It was hard then to stand firm and fast in the 
faith of Christ. But now it is harder still ; for the relation between 
the two orders of grace and nature, the contact of one with the 
other, has come to be far more inward and close now than it was 
then, and the conflict involved in it is for this reason, in the same 
proportion, more spiritual and profound; so that the very elect are 



648 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

in continual clanger of being deceived by it to the loss of their own 
steadfastness. 

Let me then, in the way of warning, reiterate solemnly on the 
present occasion what I have tried to make the burden of m} T teach- 
ing on this subject in former j^ears. Nature is not Grace. That 
which is born of the flesh is at last, in its highest sublimation, flesh 
only, and not Spirit. It can never, in its own order, save the world. 
Ye, surely, have not so learned Christ. However the earth may 
help the Church, } t ou know that it is not in the power of the earth 
to create the Church, or to take into its own hands the office and 
work of the Church. The mastery of mind over matter, whether 
in the way of knowledge or of art, is not in and of itself the raising 
of man to glory and honor. The race can never be brought right, 
and made to be what it ought to be b} T machinery, or mere outward 
social economy of any sort ; and just as little can it be redeemed by 
politics, education, or science. 

Its true regeneration, if there be truth in the Gospel, must come 
ultimately from above, and not from beneath. Humanitarianism 
is not Christianity ; and the Gospel of such men as Emerson, Theo- 
dore Parker, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others whose names 
come easily to mind now in the same connection, is not the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ as it lies before us in the Xew Testament. The mil- 
lenium it promises is not the reign of the saints foretold by proph- 
ets and apostles; and it is only too plain, alas! that the agencies 
and tendencies which are held to be working towards it, carry in 
them no sure guaranty whatever of millennial triumph in any form. 
All the signs of the time, as we have seen, betoken universal and 
fundamental changes. But we have no assurance in these signs, that 
the change will move on victoriously in the line of universal right- 
eousness and truth. 

On the contrary, it is all too plain that the elements and forces, 
which are bringing on the new era, are themselves fraught with a 
power of evil, which may prove altogether too strong in the end 
for all they appear to have in them as a power of good. Along 
with titanic strength, we see at work on all sides titanic corruption 
and sin. The very effort that is made to scale the heavens, in the 
way of material aggrandizement and politico-social self-exaltation, 
seems to invite upon itself the thunderbolts of Divine wrath, and 
to foreshadow a confusion worse than that of old on the plains of 
Shinar. We cannot trust the ground on which the age is standing. 
We know that it is volcanic. We cannot look forth with full 
security on the bounless ocean before us. It may be — our hearts 



Chap. XLVII] commencement address 649 

tell us — an ocean of storms and wrecks, more terrible than any the 
world has ever yet known. 

This is one lesson we are required to take home to ourselves, in 
the present state of our country and of the world. But it is not 
the only lesson. We are required, on the other hand, to see and 
feel that the great things which are now coming to pass around us, 
and looming into sight before us, are indeed part of God's plan for 
the final bringing in of His kingdom; and that we, therefore, can 
be true and faithful to this cause, in our generation, only as we 
throw ourselves with free consciousness into the movement, and 
endeavor to work in and through it for Christian purposes and 
ends. We have no right to ignore the rushing tide of histoiy, or 
to stand aside from the torrent with which it is bearing all things 
in its own direction. Indeed, we cannot do so, if we would. For 
history here is beyond all question world-history; and we must 
move and work wakingly in the bosom of it, if we are to have any 
real life whatever in the life of the world. This does not mean, of 
course, that we are to surrender our minds blindly to the general 
spirit of the age, as being in and of itself the Spirit of God (vox 
populi, vox Dei) ; or that we are to trust the movement of the age, 
as being at once in its reigning factoral forces the wisdom and 
power of God, working positively toward the ideal of a perfect 
humanity. 

We may fear, or we may be sure, that the relation of all to the 
coming end will be found at last to be that of negative, more than 
direct positive, preparation for its advent; even as the old Oriental 
and Grecian worlds prepared the way, in their vain endeavors " by 
wisdom to know God," for the coming of Christ in the flesh. But 
even in this view, the historical significance of the movement can- 
not be questioned, and we are bound to take interest in it accord- 
ingly. We must be children of our country, and also children of 
our age. So much is demanded of us, both by our philosophy and 
by our religion. Only let us try to be so, by the grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, in such sort that we shall be likewise all children of 
the light and true sons of God, in being at the same time true sons 
of the Church. 

Among other interests requiring to be held thus in union and 
correspondence with the vast advancing movement which is upon 
us, the cause of education especially deserves to be spoken of at 
this time — being as it is, the bond of our Academic brotherhood, 
and the common interest which brings us together on the present 
occasion. 
41 



650 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Like all other interests in the country, it is thrown into agita- 
tion, and forced toward revolutionary change, by the power of the 
general revolution through which the country is now passing. It 
is moving historically with the movement of our national history 
at large. Evidently we have come to a sort of crisis here as else- 
where, and a new era of education is breaking upon us, no less than 
a new era of politics and religion. 

The thoughts of men with regard to the subject are expanded ; 
and along with expanded thoughts, are coming to be revealed new 
zeal, new liberty, new activity, in its service. Indeed, one of the 
most striking features of the time is the disposition which has be- 
gun to be shown, in every direction, to patronize and encourage 
learning and education in all forms. Donations on the part of rich 
men, in favor of literary institutions, are growing to be munificent, 
in some cases even princely. The scale of college endowments, 
and college organizations, is everywhere enlarged. Even in our 
own State, proverbial^ slow and niggardly heretofore in the cause 
of letters, a new spirit is showing itself at work. Normal schools 
and collegiate academies are with us now the order of the day. All 
our old colleges are seeking to double their strength ; while the 
munificence of one man has planted on the banks of the Lehigh 
lately a new institution, which threatens at a single bound to sur- 
pass the foundations of the whole of them together. 

But it is not only the outward economy of education that is un- 
dergoing enlargement and change in this wa}^. Still more worthy 
of note is the corresponding change that is going forward in its 
inward economy. This is still more directly the result of the gen- 
eral revolution in which the age is involved, and shows more signifi- 
cantly at the same time its ruling character and drift. All the 
conditions of the age, all the conditions especially of our American 
life, earning in its bosom at this time, as we have seen, the inmost 
and deepest historical forces of the age, form in themselves for the 
minds of men what may be called a powerful determination now 
toward outward and material interests, the conquering of nature, 
the arts and methods of political well-being, — in one word, the re- 
duction of the present world in every way to the service of the 
human race. Hence the demand, on all sides, for forms of educa- 
tion, that shall be found ministering everywhere directly to this 
general object ; and in conform^ with it, as we see, all manner of 
attempts to bring our schools and colleges into line with what is 
thus felt to be the inevitable law of the age. Hence new courses 
of stud} T all over the land, in which the practical and utilitarian 



Chap. XLYII] commencement address 651 

figure as the main thing in science, and learning is made to resolve 
itself, in great measure, into the knowledge simply of matter and 
nature. 

A 'striking illustration of the power this way of thinking has 
among us may be found in the Smithsonian Institution, standing 
as it does in some sense at the head of our educational interests. 
According to the terms of its magnificent endowment it was 
founded for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge among Men. 
In the organization of it, we are told, "no restriction is made in 
favor of any kind of knowledge, and hence each branch is entitled 
to, and should receive a share of attention." That is the theory. 
But see, now, how it has been carried into effect. From the com- 
mencement of its operations in 1847, down to the present time, it 
seems to have been quietly assumed that the increase of knowledge 
among men must be taken to mean only the promotion of science 
under its predominantly physical aspects ; and the " Smithsonian 
Contributions," accordingly, are found to be devoted to this object 
throughout, with no recognition whatever, apparently, of the ne- 
cessity of science under any other form. Physical Geography, 
Coast Surveys, Aboriginal Monuments, Palaeontology, Geology, 
Zoology, Botany, Magnetic and Meteorological Observations, 
Chemistry, Mineralogy, Agriculture, and the Application of Science 
to Arts ; these, and kindred subjects, engross the activity and the 
income of the Institution ; while all that is comprehended in the 
culture of Mind for its own sake. Morality, Humane Literature, 
Metaphysics, and Philosophy in all its branches and forms, is si- 
lently ignored and forgotten, as having nothing to do with the in- 
crease and diffusion of knowledge among men in any way. The 
fact is curious, certainty, and significant; and may be taken as a 
proclamation to the world, on a large scale, of what Science, Edu- 
cation and Progress are coming more and more to mean for the 
spirit of the Nineteenth Century, as it is now sweeping all things 
before it in the new-born life of these United States. 

It is no business of ours to denounce or oppose the change, by 
which other colleges are seeking to adapt themselves to the educa- 
tional demands of this spirit at the present time. Let us hope that 
all such experiments may work toward good ultimately in some 
way. It is enough for us to know that we, as the friends of Frank- 
lin and Marshall College, are not called upon to fall in with the 
movement. Our circumstances do not allow us to cope, if we would, 
with the stronger bids that are made fur popular favor in this form ; 
and there is no need' or occasion for us to be putting forth our 



652 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

strength for what can be more effectually accomplished from other 
quarters. Our vocation, too, it is plain, is altogether different. If 
we are to be of any account in the cause of learning and education, 
it must be by our holding on steadfastly to what has been the feign- 
ing purpose and character of this institution from the beginning; 
and instead of finding in the present bearing of things a reason for 
changing our course, we should see in it rather only new reason for 
our continuing unswervingly true to it to the last. 

For if the general bearing of the age be, in the way we have seen, 
more and more toward merel}' material interests and outward ends, 
it is but all the more necessary that our testimony, if it has been 
worth anything heretofore, in favor of education for its own sake 
and for purely spiritual or inward ends, should not now be relaxed, 
but be made, if possible, more firm than ever. This, especially, is 
needed at the present time; and in no other way possibly can we, 
with our resources and opportunities, do better service to our coun- 
try and our generation. 

Let it be our ambition, then, and our care, to maintain in vigor- 
ous force here, an institution that shall be devoted supremely to 
liberal education, in the old and proper sense of the term; liberal, 
as being free from all bondage to merely outside references and 
ends, and as having to do, first of all, with the enlargement of the 
mind in its own sphere. This, after all, must remain the true con- 
ception of education forever. We need not quarrel with other 
forms of knowledge and skill, that are held with inaiy now to cany 
with them the whole force of the name. Let them pass for what 
they are actually worth, in their utilitarian, practical, and profes- 
sional sphere. But no such forms of knowledge can ever be suffi- 
cient, of themselves, to complete the organization of a true human 
culture. Underneath all such practical superstructure, if it is to 
stand, must be at least a basis of solid spiritual thought; and if 
many, in their studies, make all in all of the outward, it will only 
be the more necessary always that some (though few) make all in 
all of the inward. 

In such a time as ours especially, and in view of the grand his- 
torical crisis, through which, as a nation, we are now passing, it is 
all-important that the working spirit of the countiy should be 
leavened, to some wholesome extent, b} r a corresponding thinking 
spirit. Never was there a time, when there was more room or more 
need for education, regarded simply as a discipline of the soul for its 
own sake. Agriculture, mining, and civil engineering, are of vast 
account; but not of so much account, by any means, as the develop- 



Chap. XLVII] commencement address 653 

ment of a strong and free spirit in men themselves. It still remains 
true, as in all ages, that ideas are the deepest power in the world; 
and the most salutary forces of the world's life will ever be found 
to be, in the end, not those which men are enabled to draw from 
the storehouses of nature, and in this way, as it were, from beyond 
themselves, but from those that are comprehended in the right 
ordering and proper constitution of their own minds. There lies 
the end emphatically of all true education. 

Let it not be imagined, however, that in thus opposing the 
spiritual to the physical, I mean to discourage the study of nature, 
or to detract from its importance in a course of academical training. 
For us in this world, the spiritual depends every where on the phys- 
ical, has its root in the physical, starts forth from the physical, 
and is qualified and conditioned by the physical throughout. There 
can be, therefore, no effectual study of mind that is not grounded, 
first of all, in the study of nature; and so, of course, no thorough 
or complete education, without the natural sciences. In this view, 
the zeal which is now shown in favor of these sciences, and the 
wonderful success with which they are pursued, are a matter for 
congratulation; and form unquestionably one of those pregnant 
signs of the time, which we are bound wisely to respect and turn 
to account, in seeking to give historical direction to any part we 
may take in the cause of education at the present time. 

All we need to protest against in the case is the insanity of 
making nature, in its own sphere, the end of all knowledge; the 
madness of imagining, that moral interest can ever be subordinated 
safely to material interests; the wild hallucination of dreaming, 
that the great battle and work of life for man is to be accomplished 
by physics and mechanics, by insight simply into the laws of nature 
and mastery of its powers, by chemistry, geology, mineralogy, 
metallurgy, and other such studies, by polytechnic ingenuity and 
skill applied in all manner of ways to business and trade. There 
is a higher view than all this, in which the stucty of nature becomes 
itself the study of mind, and the material meets us everywhere as 
the sacrament of the spiritual and divine. It is the view presented 
to us in the first chapter of Genesis, where all lower forms of crea- 
tion are described as rising organically, stage after stage, to the 
completion of their full sense ultimately in man ; from the light of 
whose presence then, thrown back upon time, they come to be 
irradiated with a portion of the same glory that belongs to man 
himself as the image of God. It is easy to see how, in such view, 
room is made in our scheme of a liberal education for the largest 



654 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

use of natural science; how it is, that there can be no right phil- 
osophy of spirit, which is not, at the same time, a philosophy of 
nature in its profoundest sense ; how physics and metaphysics go 
hand in hand together, each helping the other to its proper perfec- 
tion, and both joining to bear the soul up finally to those empyrean 
heights, where knowledge ends in religion, and the vision of the 
world is made complete in the vision of Him who is before all 
worlds — the same } T esterday, to-day, and forever. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

THE fresh start initiated at Lancaster to promote the present and 
future prosperity of the College was a genuine one, and it was 
felt throughout the Eastern part of the Church. It formed indeed 
an epoch. The Synod gave it a full endorsement, and adopted meas- 
ures to co-operate with the Board of Trustees in a united effort to 
carry out its wishes on a generous and liberal scale. But the inter- 
est thus excited became diverted, to a certain extent, towards other 
educational interests in the Church, which were supposed to have 
prior claims at the time, and which utilized, in some degree, the 
energy which had been developed at Lancaster and in the Synod. 
Mercersburg College at Mercersburg, and Ursinus College at Col- 
lege ville, Pa., sprang into existence and evinced considerable 
strength and zeal in the cause of education. These .things, al- 
though discouraging and disappointing to Dr. Nevin at the time, 
did not, however, after all seriously affect the movement in favor of 
the central institution of the Church at Lancaster. Committees 
went to work to devise the necessary machinery by which contri- 
butions, large and small, might be made towards the College. 

Some difficulties were experienced in finding a strong and vigor- 
ous agent to undertake the work: and as there was no one apparent- 
ly forthcoming, such an one as Mr. Leonard already referred to, Dr. 
Wolff, one of the Trustees, agreed to take it in hand for the time, 
without any compensation for his services. He had succeeded Dr. 
Nevin in the theological chair at Mercersburg, had just resigned his 
position as Professor, and had removed to Lancaster to spend the re- 
mainder of his days in retirement. He was then in his seventj^-third 
year, and although failing in physical strength, his interest and zeal 
for the institutions of the Church were as vigorous as ever. At the 
annual meeting of the Board, in 1 86 1, he reported that, although he 
had not been able to devote much time to the work, yet in a few 
places, including Easton and Philadelphia, he had already secured 
over $16,000 in subscriptions for endowment and new buildings. 
His methods of operation as agent were somewhat peculiar. In his 
report he said that "he had in no instance sought to persuade any 
person to give: that he simply presented the claims of the College 
to their support, and left them to give or not give at their pleasure, 
and that with a single exception no one positively declined to give." 

(655) 



656 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

In a certain case a party at Easton, Pa., where he had been pastor 
at one time, had decided to give even before they heard his state- 
ments. They understood that he intended to make them a visit, 
and so they had set apart their dollars hy the hundreds for him 
when he came. 

It was his good fortune to secure $35,000 from a wealtlrv gentle- 
man in Philadelphia by a single visit. Mr. Lewis Audenried by 
his industry, energy and good business habits had amassed a 
large fortune, was a bachelor, was in some respects peculiar, and 
not always accessible to those who called on him for pecuniar}^ 
contributions. Dr. "Wolff had never seen him, and although not by 
any means encouraged by others to call on him, under some sort 
of inspiration, he felt it to be his duty to go and see him at least. 
Mr. Audenried received him courteously, and informed him that he 
had heard him preach a sermon many years before in Philadephia 
before the Presbyterian Synod which he had never forgotten, and 
that he still remembered very distinctlj" his features. He was, 
therefore, a welcome visitor. After he had explained to him the 
object of his visit, he told him that he was just the person with 
whom he wished to confer. It was his wish to leave a legacy to 
the Church, but he did not exactly know to what particular object 
or cause he should devote it, where it would be safe, where it would 
be the means of doing the most good, and therefore he wished for 
information. When Dr. TVolff explained to him the central rela- 
lation of the College and told him that its Board of Trustees had 
never lost a dollar by injudicious investments, he was satisfied ; and 
when it was suggested to him that it would be well to endow a 
professorship in the College, he said he would do so. The result 
was communicated to Dr. ]S"evin and to one or two other reliable 
persons, but beyond this inner circle it remained a profound secret 
— by special respect — until Mr. Audenried ? s death in 1874, when it 
appeared that in his will, in addition to various other benevolent 
bequests, he had bequeathed 835,000 for the endowment of a pro- 
fessorship in Franklin and Marshall College, adding as his wish 
that his pastor, Rev. J. H. Dubbs, should be its first occupant. Dr. 
Dubbs, accordingly, was elected to fill the Audenried Professorship 
of History and Archaeology in the College in 18*75, and since then 
bj T his scholarship and literary tastes he has shown superior quali- 
fications for the position. 

During the year 186T, Dr. Xevin wrote to William L. Baer, Esq., 
of Somerset, Pa., an earnest letter, in which he set forth the im- 
portance of giving the College at Lancaster an ample endowment, 



Chap. XLYIII] the wilhelm family 651 

earnestly urging him and others favorable to the movement to 
unite in the effort to concentrate the energies of the Church so as 
to place it on a generous and enlarged basis. Mr. Baer showed 
the letter to the Rev. A. B. Koplin, Reformed pastor in the south- 
ern part of the county, and together the}' read it to the Wilhelm 
family, consisting of two brothers and one sister, living together as 
one household and somewhat advanced in years. They pointed out 
to them the necessity, and the importance of having at least one 
strong, well endowed institution in the Church, and Mr. Baer il- 
lustrated this point by adding that " it was better to have one noble 
lion than a whole cage full of fighting raccoons," which was an 
apt illustration, as the Wilhelms did not live far from the Alle- 
ghenies. No immediate effect seemed to have been produced, either 
by the argument or the illustration, and it took years before the 
plant brought forth its fruit in its season. Its growth, progress 
and fruition, form an interesting chapter, in which Dr. Nevin, as 
President of the College, was, to a large extent, the animating 
spirit; and we present it here as an excursus, which may serve per- 
haps as a diversion of mind, to those especially who have been fol- 
lowing him in his theanthropic, christological, philosophical and 
churchly speculations. 

Sometime in 1868 Dr. Wolff learned from the papers that the 
Wilhelm family had already bequeathed their earthly possessions 
to various objects connected with the Church, without any regard 
to the Institutions at Lancaster. This seemed somewhat strange 
to him. However, wishing to know the truth of the matter, he 
wrote to Mr. William L. Baer, the legal adviser of the Wilhelms, for 
more reliable information, who stated in reply that they had not as 
yet, by will, made any distribution of their property, and expressed 
some surprise that the College at Lancaster had not clone more to 
press its claims upon the attention of these people. It is said that 
a will had, indeed, been made for them in due form, but that their 
names had not been annexed to it. Dr. Wolff felt too infirm at the 
time to travel any distance, and, accordingly, he requested the au- 
thor, then Secretary of the Faculty at Lancaster, to visit the Wil- 
helms, and take with him a letter from Dr. Nevin, urging them to en- 
dow a professorship in the College. Through Mr. Baer he received 
an invitation to assist in laying the corner-stone of a new church near 
their residence, which it was supposed would give him a suitable 
opportunity to carry out the object of his visit, without exciting- 
special inquiry in any direction. He arrived there in time to take 
part in the ceremony, and in his discourse on the occasion he did 



658 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

not forget to say that, with the exception of ministers of the Gos- 
pel, it was the duty of Christians generally to make as much mone}^ 
as possible, provided they did it honestly, and employed it in the 
promotion of good and useful objects, without setting their hearts 
on it. The doctrine seemed to be somewhat new, but it was regarded 
as altogether sound and satisfactory, especially to those who were 
regarded as rather covetous by their neighbors. 

The morning following the laying of the corner-stone, the writer, 
in company with Mr. Baer, Rev. A. B. Koplin, the pastor, Rev. 
Greorge H. Johnston, Mr. Baer's pastor, and perhaps one or two oth- 
ers, went out early from Elk Lick to see the Wilhelms, and found 
the two brothers, Benjamin and Peter, hxisy in directing the workmen 
at the new building. We informed them that we had a letter from 
Dr.- Kevin , and thej T told us to read it for them. They had heard of 
him as one who, like themselves, was opposed to fanatical sects, and 
they both seemed to be pleased. The letter was earnest and simple 
in language, asking them to endow a professorship in Franklin and 
Marshall College, amounting to $25,000. We read slowly and de- 
liberately, scanning their features closel} T when we came to mention 
the amount of money which they were asked to give; but, instead 
of any indication of surprise or dissent on their countenances, we 
saw the workings only of serious thought. After we had finished 
reading and made a few additional explanatoiy remarks, there was 
a deep pause, which we, in our simplicity, hoped might be followed 
by a favorable response. At length Benjamin, pointing to their 
pastor, Mr. Koplin, told us that he was their friend — er ist unser 
Freund — by which he meant to say that they would consult with 
him in regard to the matter. This was satisfactoiy as far as it 
went, as we knew that both he and their kvwyer, Mr. Baer, had 
already urged them to invest a portion of their estate in the Institu- 
tions at Lancaster, as the place where it would be safe and most 
fruitful in the future. We thought of remaining on the ground for 
several da} T s, a week or longer, if necessary, in order to follow up 
the effect of the letter missive ; but Mr. Baer told us that nothing 
further useful could be done at that time, and we followed his ad- 
vice, which we afterward discovered was the best. We returned 
home pretty confident that a favorable response would be sent to 
Lancaster, at most, within a year, in which we were fortunately 
doomed to be disappointed. 

From the Rev. Mr. Koplin we received a histoiy of the Wilhelm 
family, which we here repeat, believing it will be interesting to our 
readers. There were two brothers, Benjamin and Peter, and a sister 



Chap. XLYIII] the wilhelm family 659 

Mary or Polly, all three unmarried, who resided together in the spa- 
cious old log house in which they had been born. In some way they 
held their property in common. By their industry and economical 
habits they had prospered greatly, adding farm to farm until they 
were the joint possessors of over 3,200 acres of land. Their parents 
were of Reformed and Lutheran origin, and retained their churchly 
traditions. They were wont to rent their farms only to church 
people, trying in this waj r to keep fanatical sectaries at as great a 
distance as possible. As they had heard that Dr. Nevin entertained 
similar views in regard to the sects, their respect for his name was 
increased. They were, however, rather worldly people, baptized 
sheep astray out in the wilderness, at a considerable distance from 
any church of their own kind, and seldom attending divine worship 
anywhere, until they were well advanced in years. In this state of 
affairs, in the year 1859, it so happened that Pastor Koplin, of Elk 
Lick, a village four miles distant from their residence, preached on 
a Sunday afternoon in their neighborhood, and as it turned out, the 
brothers attended the service. They heard the voice of this shep- 
herd gladly, and declared that, of all others whom they had heard, 
he was the man for them — Er ist der Mann fuer uns. 

They requested him to preach regularly for them in their school- 
house. A catechetical class of some twenty persons was formed, 
and weekly instruction imparted in the school-house from week to 
week, which the Wilhems attended with many of the young people. 
They became much interested in what was said to them, and tried 
to interest others also to attend these instructions. On horseback 
they rode up and down the mountain, urging people, young and 
old, not in the Church, to come and attend instruction — Die 
Kinderlehre. They told mothers and fathers, that they themselves 
had neglected this duty too long — until they had become gray- 
haired — but now they urged all others not to do as they had done. 

In the Fall of 1859, a congregation consisting of five members 
was organized, and twenty-one catechumens were confirmed. Ben- 
jamin was then elected as Elder, and Peter as Deacon. The little 
flock grew in numbers, and in 1863 it was decided to build a new 
church for its accommodation ; but as Mr. Koplin was called 
into another field of usefulness, the matter was postponed for the 
time being. In 186? the old pastor agreed to return to his former 
charge, provided, if he should accept of the call, a new church 
would be erected. The promise was immediately made, and the 
former pleasant pastoral relation was renewed. The corner-stone of 
the new Church was laid in June, 1868, but it was not consecrated 



660 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

until October, 1869. In all it cost $14,000, of which amount the 
Wilhelms contributed over $11,000 ; and in addition they presented 
to the congregation a fine organ, which, according to their churchly 
feelings, they regarded as a matter of the utmost importance. 

The Wilhelms told their neighbors to contribute according to 
their means for this object and the}- would do the rest, give the 
ground and pay the balance still due on the new house when it 
was consecrated. They faithfully kept their word, and did not 
hesitate at any expense — not even in getting the best cut-stone — 
in making it the best looking structure, internally and externally 
considered, in the county. The church stands on an elevation, not 
far from the old Wilhelm homestead, and presents quite an inter- 
esting and suggestive contrast to travelers as the}- pass by in the 
railroad cars below, — a monument truly of Christian charity. 
It was consecrated- in October, 1869, on which occasion Dr. Xevin 
had the honor of preaching the dedicatory sermon. He was 
the man whom the Wilhelms liked to see in the pulpit ; and Peter 
particularly, without understanding all that he said, was pleased 
with his straight-forward, free and unhesitating manner of speak- 
ing, and said that he agreed with him fully in his ideas of religion, 
which always avoided opposite extremes. Dr. Xevin received many 
ovations during this trip, and doubtless returned home with the 
expectation of some tangible result from it before long, but like his 
secretary, he too was fortunately doomed to be disappointed. The 
time had not yet come. The movement was a reality, and it must 
have an historical development, according to his own philosophy, 
and he with others had to wait for years with patience and sub- 
mission to the Divine Will until it came to maturity. 

The Rev. Koplin, a very prominent figure in this histoiy, had 
hailed from the West, was an aggressive and progressive man, but 
always willing to learn. The Messrs. Baer, of Somerset, William 
and Herman, both able lawyers, took an interest in him, and suggest- 
ed to him to study the theology of the Eastern part of the Church, 
in which he seemed at first to be rather crude and defective. He 
commenced to read Dr. Nevin's Mystical Presence, with other 
productions of his pen, and for a time he became a most diligent 
student of theology, until he caught up fully to his teachers at 
Somerset. 

He gradually identified himself with the Church in the East and 
wrote to Dr. Xevin for advice in regard to the Wilhelm estate, who 
explained to him fully the situation, and urged upon him the 
necessity and importance of endowing first the more full}- the 



Chap. XLYIII] the rev. a. b. koplin 661 

mother schools at Lancaster. This led to a correspondence that 
continued for some time, which was as pleasant to the one party as 
it was profitable to the other. 

It was in this way that he became interested in the institutions at 
Lancaster, and was led, as if by a monition from above, to devote 
all the energies of his enthusiastical nature to strengthen these foun- 
tains of learning in the East — in season and out of season. It 
was with him a cherished idea, an inspiration, which might have led 
him, at times, to exert an undue force upon the progress of events ; 
but if there was any danger in this direction, he met with salutary 
restraints from his monitors, the cool-headed lawyers at Somerset, 
who had an intelligent faith in history, understood human nature, 
and felt confident that the Wilhelms would do their part when their 
time came. — In a letter to the author he writes thus : " I was urged 
to give my influence with the Wilhelms to devote their property 
to some new enterprise — not to Lancaster — and I was punished for 
not doing so in more ways than one. I have, however, the satis- 
faction of knowing that I did my duty from love to the true inter- 
ests of the Church, and that in the Lord's own good time there 
will be honor to whom honor is due." There were those who dif- 
fered from him no doubt honestly, who thought that this accumu- 
lation of wealth should be retained for useful purposes in the 
county or elsewhere ; but he was honest and sincere also, and as a 
spiritual counsellor he was perfectly justifiable in advising his 
wealthy parishioners to dispose of their earthly possessions in a 
manner that he thought would be most useful to the Church and 
the cause of Christ. 

William — now Judge Baer — understood them and had secured 
their confidence also as their legal adviser — from the time he had 
delivered a political stump-speech in their neighborhood in flowing 
"Pennsylvania Dutch," which they understood better than any- 
thing else. He thought it was the part of wisdom to strengthen 
the old Institution at Lancaster, rather than to start a new one in 
the western part of the State, whose future at best was uncertain. 

The very positive position of the pastor loci continued to subject 
him to a considerable amount of discomfort in his parochial charge. 
At length to his extreme regret Pastor Koplin found it necessary 
to withdraw from his pastoral field in Somerset county. He did 
so with the advice of the Wilhelms, as he no longer received an ade- 
quate support for himself and family. He carried with him, how- 
ever, their confidence and he retained it to the end, through pastoral 
letters or friendly correspondence. Fortunately, he was succeeded 



662 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

in his charge by a pastor with views similar to his own, the Rev. 
C. U. Heilman, who had been acting for a time as agent of the Col- 
lege, and was advised hj the Board to take Pastor Koplin's charge, 
which was now open to him, through Mr. Koplin's influence. This 
was the proper thing to do, and the College found in him a sufficient 
protector of its interests in Somerset county. 

In the year 1873 Mr. Benjamin Wilhelm died, aged 82 3-ears. 
Just before his death he called his younger brother Peter to his 
bedside, solemnly reminded him, in the presence of Mr. Koplin, of 
the vow they had made to devote their earthly possessions to the 
Church, and told him that his last request was that his share of the 
estate should be returned to the Lord from whom he had received 
it. These were among his last words, when he calnil}- fell asleep 
in the Lord. — His brother was urged to make a speed}- disposition 
of the estate by a legal document which would cover the case, but 
he, like many elderly persons, had some repugnance to making a 
will. 

There were still some difficulties in the way ; Peter's mind was dis- 
tracted by an effort to direct his legacies in another direction, and 
he was anxious to have the property free of all incumbrances, so 
that he might be able to give it back to the Lord in a form that 
would admit of no possibility of any sort of litigation. 

Towards the close of the year 1876 Dr. Koplin wrote to Mr. Peter 
TTilhelm the last of a series of letters, urging him no longer to make 
any del&j in carding out the dying request of his brother Benjamin. 
He was soon afterwards informed that his letter had accomplished 
its object, and that the matter would be attended to at an earty 
day. — Early in the beginning of the } T ear 1877, Peter felt that his 
end was drawing near, and the great significant work of his life was 
not accomplished. Under the impression that he would not live 
much longer, he sent for Mr. Baer to come and write out his last 
will and testament. He had thought over the matter and he wished 
to bequeath to his nearest heirs who were worthy what he regarded 
as a sufficiency — $15,000 — and to those whom he considered un- 
worthy a mereh' nominal sum; also something to useful objects in 
Somerset county; but the bulk of the estate he bequeathed to the 
College and Seminary at Lancaster — two-thirds to the former and 
one-third to the latter. The will was signed, sealed and ordered to 
be put on record, with plent}' of evidence to show that it was his 
own free act, performed whilst he was in a sound state of mind. 
The long expected legacy seemed to be now secure, and the news 
came wafted over the mountains, spreading joy and gladness to 



Chap. XLYIII] the wilhelm bequest 663 

msaiy interested in the intellectual work at Lancaster. But in less 
than thirty days Peter, as if his life work was finished, took sick, lay 
down and died, and, according to the laws of the State, the lega- 
cies for benevolent purposes in the will all became invalid. Dis- 
ease made rapid progress in his body during his last hours, and 
when the lawyers came from Somerset he no longer had the 
strength, even with a scratch of the pen, to avert what seemed to 
be an approaching public calamity. His last words to Mr. Herman 
L. Baer, with a full consciousness of the state of affairs, were: 
Der Herr weisst wohl das ich es gut gemeint habe. He then fell 
asleep with the consciousness that he meant well. 

The situation now became painful in the extreme, and the folly 
of the law of the state bearing on the case was freely denounced. 
At first Mr. W. J. Baer was apprehensive that the legacy was lost to 
the Church, but Dr. Koplin knew all the facts in the case, which he 
communicated to Mr. George F. Baer, of Reading, Pa., who at once 
decided that they were of sufficient strength to give vitality to the 
will. He communicated them to his older brother William, and 
they together agreed that they justified an appeal to the Courts of 
Justice. The situation thus became a very critical one. The heirs, 
a considerable number of them, came forward, and claimed their 
rights to the property, engaged able legal counsel and offered him 
a large portion of the estate, if he would secure it for them. On 
the other hand it was a clear case that there was abundant parol 
testimony to show that the two brothers with their sister had 
entered into a solemn covenant to give their earthly possessions 
to the Church, and it was felt that it would be very unrighteous if 
by a legal fiction their will should be thwarted. The Board, there- 
fore, employed legal counsel, consisting of the Honorable John. 
Cessna, President of the Board, Hon. Thos. E. Franklin, and Geo. 
F. Baer, Esq., all members of their own bod} 7 , who, without any 
compensation for their services, were successful in carrying out the 
original object of the will. 

The case was thrown into a Court of Equity, at which Dr. Koplin 
and William J. Baer gave lengthy and overwhelming testimony 
concerning the solemn wishes of the two brothers and their sister 
in the matter. After they were heard a compromise was made and 
settlement with all concerned was effected. The property had been 
appraised at the low figure of $70,000, and it was agreed to pay the 
legal heirs $25,500 for their claims. In the will they were to receive 
only $15,000. Accordingly they fared better than if the will of 
their uncle had been literally sustained. 



664 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Thus all barriers in the way of carrying out the provisions of the 
will were removed and seven-ninths of the entire estate reverted to 
Franklin and Marshall College and the Seminary. Its value at the 
time was variously estimated at from $60,000 to $100,000. After a 
subsequent special geological examination of its mineral resources 
in coal, iron and limestone was made by a skilful engineer, Mr. Hoff- 
man, of Pottsville, Pa., it was ascertained that its prospective value 
may be considerably bej- ond the original estimate. Up to this time, 
1889, it has been the source of income, sufficient at least to indem- 
nify the College for the $25,500, which it advanced to the heirs to 
satisfy their claims ; and it is manifest that the land with its rich 
deposits of coal is increasing rather than decreasing in value. The 
compromise gave general satisfaction to the friends of the College, 
and was a matter of considerable surprise. Much of the credit for the 
settlement of this vexed question was due to Hon. A. H. Coffroth, 
the counsel for the heirs. In the hands of a lawyer of less sterling 
integrity and public spirit, the suit might have been prolonged for 
3 T ears at great expense to both sides, and with fruitful results to 
the lawyers. Mr. Coffroth took a thoughtful and considerate view 
of the situation, and consulted his law preceptor, Judge Jeremiah 
S. Black, who advised him to consent to a reasonable compromise, 
and he was afterwards successful in inducing his clients to take 
that view of the case. Judge Black was an enlightened statesman 
and Christian, an admirer of Dr. Xevin and his talents, acquainted 
with his arduous efforts to elevate a struggling college to respect- 
ability and usefulness in the State, but at the same time, an upright 
judge, who at once saw the equity in this case. This enabled him 
to give judicious advice in the matter and it was settled in an hon- 
orable wa} T , satisfactory to all concerned on both sides. 

The actual amount of money paid over for the increase of the 
endowment of the College, including some ten or twelve thousand 
dollars contributed by the Alumni to endow an Alumni Professor- 
ship to be filled by Prof. William M. Xevin, during Dr. Nevin's 
administration of the College, was about seventj' thousand dollars. 
Augmented, however, by what must, at no ver} r distant day, be re- 
alized from the TVilhelm estate, it will, no doubt, considerably ex- 
ceed $200,000, which, as we have seen, was the figure fixed upon 
in a moment of enthusiasm in the year 1866, when the new impulse 
was given to the operations of the College by the appointment of 
Dr. Nevin as President. 

As the movement for the more liberal endowment of the College 
progressed, the way was open for the erection of a new boarding 



Chap. XLYIII] dr. nevin's resignation 665 

house on the College Campus. Its corner-stone was laid during the 
Commencement of 1871, and named after Dr. Harbaugh, who had 
first urged the erection of such a building. It cost $15,000, and was 
paid for out of the contributions made to Dr. Wolff and others for 
this particular purpose. It was a palpable indication of progress, and 
everybody was pleased. — After the death of Dr. Wolff, the Rev. C. 
U. Heilman became the agent of the College, and continued in that 
capacity from 1872 to 1874. By his industry and perseverance the 
College endowment was considerably enlarged, which was very 
fortunate, as it helped to diminish the evil effects upon the Col- 
lege, occasioned by the unproductive investment already referred 
to. — But just at this point enthusiasm overleaped the mark. The 
Faculty had been active in various ways in increasing the Col- 
lege endowment, and for a while kept up a conservative progress; 
but the movement fell into other hands and the zeal for new 
buildings went beyond the limits of financial prudence. — It was 
proposed to erect a large building for the Preparatory Depart- 
ment as the most successful means of attracting students and candi- 
dates for the college classes. Dr. Nevin and the Faculty approved 
of this project, provided the necessary funds were secured before the 
building was erected, but they were overruled. There was a con- 
siderable degree of undue enthusiasm enlisted in the movement. It 
was alleged that the money could be raised by the agent as the new 
building went up, or afterwards. Under this impression the Board 
of Trustees, strange to say, agreed to advance $20,000 from its 
principal to be invested in brick and mortar, contrary to Dr. 
Nevin's judgment. An admirable edifice was erected on the north 
end of the Campus, but the large amount of money taken from the 
endowment fund was not restored to its place, neither at the time 
nor afterwards. Besides, contra^ to over sanguine predictions, no 
unusual number of students were attracted b}^ the new Academy 
building, and it yielded little or nothing in the way of income. 
What had been productive capital now became unproductive, and 
the treasury of the College suffered as a consequence. 

Here again, as once before in Dr. Nevin's experience at Mercers- 
burg, there was another huge pile of bricks for him to contemplate, 
which also gave him no small amount of disquietude. The sala- 
ries of the Professors had been increased, and the income of the 
College had been sufficient to meet them when they became due; 
but when it came to be diminished by an unprofitable investment, 
they no longer received their quarterly instalments in advance as 
had been the custom, and it became necessary for them to wait for 
42 



666 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

their pay. The deficits in the treasury increased from year to year, 
until Dr. Nevin saw that the means were no longer at hand to pay 
the President's salary, and for this reason, as well as for others based 
on his advanced age, he resigned the presidency of the College in 
1876, to spend his remaining } T ears in retirement. This was a 
matter of general regret, but it was felt that he was fully justified 
in the premises. The friends of the College wished him a happy 
green old age and a peaceful decline in life. — The impulse imparted 
to Franklin and Marshall College during the presidency of Dr. 
jSTevin, as might be presumed, continued after his resignation, and 
helped to give it a healthful progress, in proportion as external 
conditions became more favorable. No effort, however, was made 
to provide for the support of a successor, or to endow the presi- 
dency, until after his death in 1886. Then the work was undertaken 
with a large degree of enthusiasm as a tribute of respect to his 
memory, and the endowment became an established fact in 1889 — 
in memoriam rei. 

It may be added that his place was filled b}' the Professors in the 
Seminary and College for one year, and that in 1878, Dr. Thomas 
G. Appel, Professor of Church History in the Seminar} 7 , became 
temporary president of the College, which office he filled in connec- 
tion with his regular duties in the Seminar} 7 until the year 1888, at 
a nominal salary; because, during this whole period the College 
was not in a condition to pay a salaried president. Thus in an 
emergency the Seminary came to the relief of the College and justi- 
fied its removal to Lancaster some years before. — In filling two 
onerous professorships Dr. Appel performed a vast amount of work 
of a difficult character. He reproduced Dr. Nevin's lectures on 
History, JSsthetics and Ethics, and presented them in a more in- 
telligible form to the students, with such additions as he was 
enabled to make by his previous study and experience as a teacher. 
— During his period of office the College maintained its character- 
istic features and the numbers of students increased from year to 
year. It was materially strengthened by four valuable additions to 
the Faculty in the persons of Professors John B. Kieffer, Jefferson 
E. Kershner, George F. Mull, and Richard C. Schiedt. — Dr. John 
S. Stahr, who succeeded Dr. Charles H. Bucld in the chair of Nat- 
ural Science in 1871, is at present acting president of the College; 
and Professor W. W. Moore, Rector of the Preparatory Depart- 
ment, is annually preparing students for the College classes, and 
laboring, not without some prospect of success, in rendering the 
Academy Building productive capital. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

TN the Summer of 1840 Dr. Pauch delivered a course of lectures 
-■- on ^Esthetics to the Sophomore Class of Marshall College at 
Mercersburg, which made a permanent impression on the minds of 
the students generally. They were read and studied by means of 
the brief notes taken of them as the} 7 were delivered, and copies of 
these were multiplied as they passed from one generation of stu- 
dents to another. After the removal of the College to Lancaster, 
lectures on this science were called for, and to some extent deliv- 
ered by Prof. Koeppen in connection with his other duties. Dr. 
Nevin, encouraged by the general interest in this study, and im- 
pressed with its value and importance in a liberal education, con- 
sented at first to deliver a few lectures on the subject, in addition 
to his lectures on History. After he became President of the Col- 
lege in 1866, they were enlarged, and the principles of this inter- 
esting science were fully developed. He gave the subject careful 
study and investigation, and based his treatment of the subject on 
the works more particularly of German authors who had written 
on ^Esthetics, such as Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, Kant, Solger, 
Yischer and others. 

The following were some of the principal topics, which were 
taken up and discussed in scientific order in the regular course : 

I. — The Idea of Beauty; objective beauty; the Sublime in time, 
space, and in dynamics or power; the subjective Sublime in the will, 
good and bad; the subjective apprehension of the Sublime, both 
objective and subjective; the Comic; the spheres and characteris- 
tics of the Comic ; the Burlesque, Wit, Humor and the Naive. 

II. — Nature Beauty, in light, air, water, minerals, plants, in ani- 
mals and man; beauty in nature real but imperfect; in the mind, 
ideal ; and perfect in their union as seen in Art. 

Ill, — The Phantasy; the characteristics of Art ; the Fine Arts, 
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry. 

From this table of contents, considerably abbreviated, it will be 
seen that these lectures formed a treatise of considerable size. Our 
limits permit us to give the reader only the general or metaphysical 
principles of Beauty as referred to in the first division of the subject. 

^Esthetics is the science of the Beautiful, so called from the Greek 
verb which denotes feeling or perception through the senses. The 

(667) 



668 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

term at first was regarded as objectionable, because it did not seem 
to cover sufficiently the ground of the science. Hegel proposed to 
call it the Philosophy of Art, and others the Science of Taste; 
but as it has to do with feeling of a high spiritual nature, the 
original title given to it has been retained as the best and after all 
the most suitable. 

The sciences have been defined as either theoretical or practical ; 
but it is easy to see that the Beautiful does not belong exclusively 
either to the one or the other of these categories. Neither can it 
be classed, strictly speaking, in a subjective or an objective sphere, 
but belongs to the Absolute, which is higher than either. 

The method here to be pursued is neither the speculative nor the 
inductive exclusively. The two must go together. Observation 
in any form calls for speculation, and speculation calls for observa- 
tion or data upon which it is to be based. It is therefore best to 
commence with the metaph}'sics of beauty, or beauty when con- 
sidered under its most general form, and then afterwards examine 
it as it appears in nature and art. 

Metaphysical beauty is back of all beauty in the world around, 
and is closely related to the ideas of the Good or ethical and the 
True, which also goes beyond these manifestations. These are 
spiritual existences made up of parts and not mere abstractions. 
As such they must be held, else God Himself in whom they meet 
and have their source would be an abstraction. 

All beauty, changing from the Sublime to the Comic or ridicu- 
lous, involves two apparently opposing forces, and yet always 
joined together b}^ a bond of unity, first the idea and then the 
form. The form is the image through which the idea manifests 
itself, the shrine of the spiritual, and the two are so bound together 
as to form an inseparable unity. The proper course to pursue in 
this science, accordingly , is to start out with the idea of beaiuVy ; 
then consider its outward embodiment ; and afterwards show how 
these two forces or powers are related, or the nature of the bond 
by which they are held together in this sphere, just as in other 
spheres. 

The word idea is used in a variety of meanings, from a real or 
true thought of the mind to a mere notion or logical abstraction of 
the mind. But here (as in the Platonic school. — Ed.) it means a 
spiritual existence, that is, an actual realit}' or entitj-, a spiritual 
force. Whilst the phenomenal world is made up of parts that limit 
each other, this spiritual existence, the idea, is boundless and in- 
finite, an indivisible unit}'. The invisible here being infinite can 



Chap. XLIX] esthetics 669 

never, therefore, be fully revealed in finite things, either in time or 
space. And yet the two forms of existence are bound together and 
exist in each other. But the spiritual manifests itself in the nat- 
ural world only through the finite, not in single parts, but in the 
phenomenal world taken as a whole ; and in that sphere it is brought 
out by a process of continual movement. 

In distinction from nature, however, the conception of art, that 
is, of the Beautiful, must come forth in a single act or production. 
The idea is first represented as something absolute, in wholeness. 
In this sense it does not actualize itself at once in an individual 
form, but in a number of relative ideas. — While we thus find an 
idea pervading all nature, we nevertheless see a difference or variety 
in its manifestations. In the lower forms of existence we find that 
there is an adaptation of means to an end, but in the higher forms, 
in animals, and especially in man, we discover that means and end 
are included in the same object. Thus the idea presents itself in 
generic distinctions, as genera and species. 

Now since the Beautiful is the presence of a universal idea in a 
sensible form, it may be found in any form of being, from the min- 
eral and plant up to man, where it becomes full and complete. At 
certain points in this movement it appears to retrograde, as where the 
higher orders of plants seem to be more imposing than the lower 
order of animals ; but this is only relative, a going back so as to 
bring up the whole force of the idea and thus carry it forward as a 
whole. Unity is the goal that is to be reached, and the parts can- 
not advance indefinitely without bringing along with them the organ- 
ism as a whole. In the lower developments there is no mind ; in 
the animal there is something resembling consciousness ; but in 
man we find it existing in its clear and proper sense. Out of it 
grows personality, the I or me in man. It comes last in the pro- 
cess of development, not out of animal or vegetable life, but out of 
the idea which rules in the whole process, calling forth the lower 
forms of existence first, in order that they may serve as a basis or 
preparation for the appearance of the higher, in which they are in- 
volved or implied and from which they derive their vitality. The 
true significance of the world comes to light only in man, who is 
for it the only true revelation, and Pan-anthropism, so to speak, is 
its secret and profoundest law. 

Thus the universal idea of the world unfolds itself through the 
various grades of mineral, vegetable and animal existence up to 
man, where it finally becomes the moral or the Groocl, which is the 
absolute end of the whole process. Truth, which is reached by the 



670 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

thinking of men, is also the last sense of the world in its funda- 
mental idea. The substance, the inward side of the Beautiful, is 
therefore the Good, and in this sense, the Good, the True and the 
Beautiful are the same. The distinctions between them lie in the 
manner in which they reveal themselves to the human mind. The 
true nature and sense, therefore, of the Beautiful cannot be drawn 
from the character of its contents, since thej T are common to the 
Good and the True, and to distinguish it from the latter, we must 
refer it to other forms of existence. — Plato was convinced that 
beautjr was something spiritual and ideal, and gives expression to 
some elevated ideas of its nature. Thus he sa3 T s that Beauty is the 
reflection of Truth, but he mixes the Beautiful with the Good. The 
Greeks generally felt that there was an intimate relation between 
the two, which the} 7 were enabled to express in their own beautiful 
language. 

The Beautiful must therefore be distinguished b} T its outward 
form or manifestations. Form ma}" be called the embodiment of the 
idea in a single object. In the first place it must always belong to 
the genus, which is required to be represented, and through the 
latter it must come to its expression. If different spheres are em- 
ployed, the representation will be sj^mbolical, not addressed to the 
desthetical but the logical feeling. But as the Beautiful is not a 
mere symbol, the idea must come to its proper expression in the 
object and form, that belong to the same genus as the idea which 
is to be represented. Such individual existence uniy be regarded 
as something accidental, and in that respect is to be broadly dis- 
tinguished from the idea on the other side, which is universal and 
necessaiy. An individual form as the production of nature is the 
opposite of all universality. But all individual existence is the re- 
sult of a generic force, the idea, which works through the forces of 
nature in order to realize itself externally. 

It is, however, modified \>y these forces, and accordingly we find 
that no vegetables, animals or men are exactly alike. The produc- 
tions of nature cross each other and mix themselves together in an 
endless variety, because the conditions to which they are subjected 
are never the same. Life supplies the germs, and subsequent de- 
velopment depends on innumerable conditions. Thus it makes a wide 
world of difference, whether a man is born in one age, country, loca- 
tion or another. Even after he comes to act for himself, he is sub- 
jected to external conditions and modified by them. Consequently, 
the second side of beaut} T is subject to endless diversification. This 
seems at first view a contradiction, that the same idea should thus 



Chap. XLIX] esthetics 6?1 

manifest itself in changeable forms; but it is not so in fact, because 
in the apparently endless diversity there is always the same primal 
unity. 

The distinctive character of the Beautiful, however, cannot be 
realized from the form as such. In modern times, especially in 
England, it has been presumed that beauty consists essentially in 
form, and it was therefore inferred that the latter was sufficient to 
show the nature of the former. But no such outward criterion can 
be found to distinguish it from other spheres of contemplation. It 
can never be realized except as the mind looks through the outward 
embodiment to its internal, life-giving power. Aristotle, the ancient 
Greek philosopher, spiritualized beauty to such an extent as to 
make it consist of a simple unity, which assumed the character of 
a dead abstraction. The English school on the other hand, of 
which Hutchison was the founder, materialized it by making it to 
consist altogether in form. Hogarth after him, in his " Analysis 
of Beauty," laid it down as his fundamental principle that beauty 
consisted in forms and lines, neither straight nor circular, but 
waving, as we see in his "line of beauty." There is some truth in 
this assertion, since it consists always in the union of the invariable 
and the variable. Burke, in his admirable treatise, on " The Beau- 
tiful and Sublime," which does credit to his great genius, treats the 
subject more profoundly than his predecessors; but he cannot be 
said to have attained to a philosophic al conception of the Beautiful, 
as he was under the dominion of the empirical system of thinking 
prevalent in his day. 

The view of the English school in attempting to define in what 
true beauty consists is too narrow on the one hand, and too wide 
on the other, as it introduces elements which do not belong to what 
is beautiful. No outward mechanical determination of its essen- 
tial character is in fact possible. Lines and waves may enter into 
the constitution of the form under which it appears, but any at- 
tempt to deduce it from them alone is fanatical and unsatisfactory 
in the end. 

Beauty is capable of presenting itself to us under many and di- 
versified forms, inasmuch as it is the representation of the absolute 
relatively and in a specific form. It cannot be bound to outward 
lines or marks ; for the beauty of a plant is different from that of 
an animal, that of a dog from that of a horse ; and consequently if 
we could determine what is beauty in plants, it would not be appli- 
cable to animals. Both sides of the Beautiful are positively essen- 
tial to a proper conception of its true nature. 



672 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

As we ascend in the scale of beauty, where its primary idea be- 
comes more fully realized, it would seem as if there were less room 
for variation, but this is not the case. As the Ideal becomes more 
concentrated and intensified in the Real as in man, the power of 
variation in its range also increases; and while objects are alike in 
certain particulars and conform to certain types, the variation be- 
comes deeper, and the room for greater distinction expands and en- 
larges itself. Nowhere is individuality so strong as in man. Thus 
we see that beauty involves not only the idea on the one side and 
an endless A^ariety of form on the other, but also a concrete union 
of the two. 

In view of this endless variety and difference of form, it has been 
thought by some that it is impossible to lay down any law of what 
constitutes beauty ; and as there can be no law, there can be no such 
a science as ^Esthetics. But it is sufficient to set this aside, if we 
say that this is not peculiar to this particular science, but extends 
also to all other sciences in the sphere of nature. — The science of 
^Esthetics has been found to take form and shape in a large measure 
from the systems of philosoph} r which may be reigning at any par- 
ticular time. Thus before the time of Kant, during the reign of 
the Wolfian philosophy in Germany, it was held that the plan or 
intelligence of the world involved a species of dualism, and this en- 
tered into the iEsthetical thinking of the age. Baumgarten was 
the advocate of this theory, according to which beaut}^ depended 
on perfection, or the Zweek of an object. Kant shook the founda- 
tion of the old order of things, and in connection with his philoso- 
phy brought out many fine ideas in regard to beauty. He was the 
first to make the distinction between the teleological judgment — the 
logical relation of means to end — and the proper asthetical idea. 
Schiller followed out this idea in regard to ^Esthetics more es- 
pecially. Afterwards Hegel with his philosophy, and still later 
Schelling treated the subject very profoundly. The followers of the 
latter in the field of ^Esthetics was Solger in his Vorlesungen ueber 
JEsthetik, who is properly called the father of ^Esthetics. He brings 
out the idea that the universal and the particular are concrete, like 
the bod}^ and the soul, the general answering to the soul and the 
single to the body. The view that he held in regard to the union 
of idea and form is represented as now prevailing everywhere. In 
more recent times the large work of Dr. Frederick Theodore Vischer, 
of the University of Tuebingen, on JEsthetik oder die Wessenscliaft 
des Schoenen, seems to have exhausted the subject, at least as view- 
eel from the Schellingian-Hegelian stand-points of philosophy. 



Chap. XLIX] esthetics 6*73 

As already said, there are two sides involved in all beauty, the 
generic and the individual, and the two are so united that the idea 
is immanent in the form. There is therefore no contradiction ex- 
isting between them. Although opposites, the one requires at the 
same time the presence of the other. In the individual or partic- 
ular form of beauty, the genus manifests itself in the individual, 
and is conditioned by outward matter, material, — or, as the Ger- 
mans say, Stoff, which is always something contingent or acci- 
dental. The generic does not, however, lose its principle; but al- 
ways retains its plastic power, although it never appears in its full 
undivided strength in the mere individual. It is like a stamp or 
seal, which always remains the same, although the impression may 
vary with the material on which it is impressed, whether it be wax 
or any other material. 

The ideal here then is a plastic power. Life depends on innumer- 
able contingencies and forces at work before the existence of any 
particular being or creature, and after it comes to exist innumer- 
able forces are brought to bear upon it in training and educating 
it. Neither side of the Beautiful, however, loses anything of its 
own peculiar nature. In minerals and vegetables, although there 
is individualization, the difference, especially in an ae.sthetical view, 
does not amount to a proper individuality. One diamond is just 
the same as another. But as we ascend to the animal, where dis- 
tinctive individuals appear in the proper sense, and especially into 
the sphere of personality in man, the underlying idea emphasizes 
itself and becomes more intense. This intensification serves, at 
the same time, to call out the individual more impressively. In 
vegetables and the low^er order of animals we see that each is a 
specimen, and we make no further account of it as a separate ex- 
istence. But in the higher animals we begin to distinguish between 
animals of the same kind, that is, to individualize, although this 
process of mental activit}^ continues to be imperfect until we reach 
the sphere of human personality, where the two sides are brought 
fully together. 

In this higher sphere the general type of humanity is more uni- 
form than in the general type of trees or animals; but at the same 
time, whilst this is the case in an external aspect, more room is left 
for distribution in an internal aspect. The individuality in the 
case of man is deeper and more emphatic, and for that reason wider 
than in the case of the vegetable or animal. He is not merely a 
specimen as a plant or animal is; not only a species, but the genus 
itself, without the diversity of species. 



6T4 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

The character of man depends on his spirit, but the spirit depends 
also upon nature around it; and it makes a vast difference, there- 
fore, what elements enter his constitution and what influences act 
upon him afterwards. There is in fact room for endless distinctions 
in the developments of personal^. — This is only bringing out the 
general idea of organization, which was had in view all along. The 
more perfect the organization becomes the more perfect will each 
of the two parts become. The more truly individualized a man is, 
the more general will he be at the same time. This seems to be a 
contradiction, but it is not so in fact. Thus we find that among 
the Greeks and Romans the men who were most different from 
others, Avere the truly representative men of their age, and embody- 
ing in themselves its true universal character, brought out its spirit 
or animus the most fully. Whilst they looked upon the body of life 
around them, they also found a voice for it and gave it full expres- 
sion. Hence after their death they were worshipped as heroes or 
demi-gods. 

In the human sphere there is a new creation, which is a moral 
life, waking in the bosom of consciousness, and making itself the 
centre of a new existence. This is not blindly or necessarily gov- 
erned b}^ any lower forms of existence. The} T in fact must first be 
recognized and accredited before they are allowed to exert any- 
kind of influence or to perform service of any sort. Thus person- 
ality brings into view the new principle of self-action. The mere 
individual life is still bound slavishly in its accidental distinctions; 
but personality, reason and will are infinite and boundless, although 
they are under one aspect within the bounds of individual life. 

The union between the generic and the individual here is not 
dead, but the perpetual activity of opposing forces, the idea assert- 
ing itself in boundless forms and yet received and controlled in a 
limited and bounded embodiment. In this conflict it may come 
to such a crisis as to amount to direct insurrection. Both forces 
are usually blamed, but they may assume such a character that the 
particular may initiate the insurrection against the general or uni- 
versal. — In a grain of wheat, for instance, under necesary favorable 
conditions, the general unites with the particular, and a plant is 
the result. But if there should be too much moisture, or other con- 
ditions are unfavorable in the contest between the two forces, they 
are both overwhelmed, and the grain is destroyed. These very 
conflicts show the inseperable connection between the two related 
forces. We find, therefore, that idea and form do not only admit, 
but imperatively require each other's presence. 



Chap. XLIX] aesthetics 6T5 

In the development of the world, as we have seen, there is a con- 
tinuous process of becoming — um zu werden — but whilst the idea 
is continually striving to manifest itself, it never reaches a full and 
complete manifestation in any form of nature. The necessary con- 
nection between the generic and the individual is accomplished 
only by thought. In the conception of the Beautiful, however, 
on the other hand, it is necessar} 7 that the idea should be fully pre- 
sented in a bounded, limited form. The latter must actually en- 
shrine the presence of the idea ; it cannot, therefore, be arbitrary, 
indefinite or transient, losing itself in other forms ; but stable, 
bringing the process of development together as it were into a 
single point. It must be sundered from all relations or associa- 
tions that serve to distract the attention, or to separate it from the 
thought or truth it is intended to enshrine. 

In the first place, then, it must be sundered as far as possible 
from all material texture, and be viewed in reference to what it re- 
presents. As soon as the attention is directed to the form in its 
material contents, it ceases to be an sesthetical object. The inter- 
est taken in an object, under this view, may not be sensuous, but 
also intellectual. It may also be regarded as an object of science, 
as when the geologist studies the Falls of Niagara, and sees neither 
beauty nor sublimity in this natural wonder of wonders— only the 
slow processes of Geolog} 7 — or an immense water-power. The anat- 
omist in dissecting a beautiful body, animal or human, makes no 
account of the beaut} 7 still lingering on it ; and the same principle 
applies when we come to dissect any object mentally. The utili- 
tarian and the sesthetical are two distinct spheres. The thing of 
beauty must be abstracted from its own outward contents, consti- 
tution and surroundings. 

Here it is that we find that " distance lends enchantment to the 
view," just because it idealizes an object by leaving out of sight 
its material contents. Distance in time has the same effect, and 
death itself may be said on the same principle to have an idealizing 
power. And so it is with vision, and also with sound. Music is 
produced b} r concordant sounds, but it becomes more perfect when 
at a distance we hear only pure musical sounds, and no longer the 
twang of the strings of the violin as we may when we are near the 
instrument. Beauty therefore holds in pure form without natural 
contents, without any contents indeed except the idea. 

Form may be abstracted or drawn off from that which it includes 
in its sensuous nature, and in its place be interpenetrable with the 
idea. The substance, matter or stoff, may be taken in three senses : 



616 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

it may denote the spiritual contents, or the proper objects of beainty ; 
it may mean some subject-matter or part of histoiy underlying a 
drama or a poem, which may be used for a poetical purpose in 
various waj^s ; or it ma}- be made to represent the plivsical contents 
of any sesthetical creation, and it is in this sense that it is ordinarily 
used in ^Esthetics. 

The idea then must be in a form or outward manifestation, and 
the relation of the two is like that of the soul to the body. In the 
body the eye is not the mere symbol of the soul, but the latter is in 
the former and looks out through it. So we look at the object or 
form of beauty with the spiritual e} T e. Then the Beautiful shines 
through it and makes itself as it were visible without any interven- 
ing reflection, not as in thinking when we communicate with pure 
truth in a spiritual wa} T , where spirit meets spirit; but where spirit 
meets spirit, in a limited, bounded object. So it is in the case of the 
Fine Arts generally, such as poetry, music, painting, and sculpture. 
Whilst in these, as well as in nature, we are confronted with a rela- 
tive idea in some particular form, we are at the same time con- 
fronted with the universal or the Absolute Idea, which presents it- 
self in the Relative. 

The Beautiful and the Good in idea have thus the same form of 
existence. How then can the}^ differ ? The Good is the actualiza- 
tion of the idea through the will, and nothing can become the Good 
to man unless through his will. Thou shalt is the address, and as 
soon as the will answers I will, then it possesses it in perpetuum. 
The True addresses itself to reason ; and the Beautiful is not 
brought about either b}^ the activity of the will or the reason, but 
by an intuitional response of its own. 

To complete, therefore, our knowledge of beauty, metaplysicalty 
considered, in addition to its objective constitution, we must seek 
to obtain some proper idea of its subjective apprehension. In fact 
it can have an existence for us only as we apprehend it. Thus it 
involves a sentiment. A good deal of the aesthetical thinking in the 
world, especially in England, has been directed to subjective feeling, 
instead of to objective constitution. It is necessaiy, however, to 
understand both the constitution and its corresponding sentiment. 
How then does beauty come to exist in the mind of the subject? 
If there were no e3 T esight in the world, we could not speak of vis- 
ible forms. A flower blooming in the desert could not be beautiful 
unless seen by man. So the object of beauty must be sensible, and 
the mind must form a conception of it : and this conception is 
property the Beautiful. We cannot say that there is any beauty to 



Chap. XLIX] esthetics G77 

us at all beyond our vision and conception of it. The apprehen- 
sion of it, however, must correspond to its general constitution, 
involving two things in one. By a process of thinking we may at- 
tain to truth, but not to beauty, which is always bound to a sensible 
manifestation; and the apprehension then always starts in an act of 
sensation, but it cannot stop at such a limit. It is always accom- 
panied by an act of mind or intuition. The two flow into each 
other ; but as in all thinking, they must be separated, and so the 
latter falls back into the sphere of intuition. 

The contemplation of the Beautiful cannot terminate in the sensi- 
ble form, cannot rest in it for a moment, for as soon as this is the 
case, the interest is sensuous and not aesthetic. Room, therefore, 
must be made immediately for another act of apprehension, which 
is spiritual and internal; but this must be involved in the first act 
of sense, so that the two are limited as it were in a single function, 

D O 7 

which goes through the external form to the idea or thought which 
lies back of it. 

An sesthetical intuition thus always starts in a sensation, but 
the senses are not all equally adapted to this purpose. Five in 
number, they are all rooted in the common ground of consciousness, 
differ more or less in their relation to the natural world, and par- 
take in different degrees of spiritual refinement. Those that have 
to do most with the outward form of objects, as sight and hearing, 
are most concerned with aesthetic processes, and give rise to the 
Fine Arts. — The two senses of sight and hearing have a mutual re- 
lation. Poetry and music are referred to the internal sense, and if 
smell or the lower senses come in at all in the domain of beaiuvy, 
they are merely subsidiary. 

The presence of the Beautiful is apprehended directly by an in- 
tuition. All the senses are in sympathy with each other, especially 
the higher ones. Motion which is addressed to the eye, naturally 
calls up the idea of music, and music, on the other hand, that of a 
rhythmical motion as in the dance. Hence we come to speak of the 
"music of the spheres," although their motions are perfectly silent. 
— In the perception of the beautiful, however, the senses are per- 
fectly transparent, like the form in the object, so as to make room 
for the spiritual apprehension. In the constitution of beauty, 
there are two ideal existences, one in the object, the other in the 
subject. 

In connection with beauty we speak also of grace or charm, 
which refers to motion and thus becomes an essential element of 
beauty. According to Schiller, grace is applied more particularly 



678 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

to woman, and clignit}' to the other sex. He makes grace to hold in 
a free, voluntary harmony of the nature of man with his natural 
constitution, which harmony is brought about by the influence of 
the former upon the latter. It involves, therefore, harmony be- 
tween two forms of existence, and presents itself most fully in man. 
Where the graceful applies, it involves the different elements in dis- 
tinction from conflicting harmony such as we find in the Sublime. 
The graceful, especially in small things, becomes the tasteful. 
Grace is the free subordination of the natural to the spiritual. But 
it is possible where the moral condition is wrong, that the force 
m&y be such as not to cause the transition from the sensible mani- 
festation to the spiritual idea to take place immediately. 

The sense-spirit in the sesthetical lna}^ be onty sublimated, as is 
often the case in the ethical, and so it may be made to pass for the 
idea itself. Instead of carrying the spectator's mind up through 
itself to the spiritual thought, the form ma}" be left in the mind by 
itself giving thus merely a kind of refined sensualism, a caricature 
of beauty. Here charm or grace becomes a mere enticement. When, 
therefore, it is said that beauty ma}^ be as well applied to sensuous 
purposes as to higher ones, the Beautiful is altogether misappre- 
hended. It is only as it is caricatured that it can be applied to any 
other than a spiritual end. — In ^Esthetics the object is not merel}' 
an aid, or a bridge, by which as bj r a word the mind reaches the 
idea, but it is the middle ground on which the two, the mind and 
the idea, meet. Here all logical processes are anticipated and cut 
short, and the harmony of the world is given forth in sensible 
manifestations. The aesthetical sentiment must necessarily be in 
correspondence with its object, and be in communication with what 
is before it. It is not logical thinking, but rational intuition. 

An gesthetical judgment is said to be free when the person has 
no interest in the object, and the satisfaction is contemplative and 
without bias. — Interest in an object and beauty are not the same. 
A mere desire for excitement is not sesthetical, but often opposed 
to it. The agreeable is different from the beautiful. It has refer- 
ence to sensual gratification, and if applied to spiritual objects still 
partakes of this character. It is not of universal authorit}*; it 
varies and fluctuates, and holds only in regard to the person whom 
it effects. Hence it is said that there is no room for dispute in 
matters of taste. There is of course an affinity between the Beau- 
tiful and the gratification of the senses, since beauty holds primarily 
in an act of sense, and therefore taste, referring at first only to 
what is sensual, is applied also to the spiritual and beautiful. Here, 



Chap. XLIX] aesthetics 679 

too, there is "no room for dispute in matters of taste," in the way 
of argument or reason. 

Beauty, as apprehended b}^ the sesthetical sentiment, demands 
universal acknowledgment. Taste even in this sphere refers more 
to the external accidental arrangement of the Beautiful than it does 
to the thing itself. A logical judgment ends in a conception, but 
an sesthetical judgment terminates in the object by an intuition. 
In a word, we apprehend an object immediately by an aesthetic 
judgment. It may afterwards be taken up as a matter of science, 
and become the object of a logical process. But apprehended by the 
aesthetic sentiment, the object here, as in religion, has as much au- 
thority, and is just as general and universal, as if reached by a logical 
process or deduction. The Good in like manner is not primarily 
a logical thought, and the same rule applies to it as the Beautiful. 
The want of a corresponding perception for the one or the other 
argues necessarily some defect in the person himself, which may be 
in his natural organization or in deficient culture. 

The Beautiful, as already said, in its proper constitution, is the 
resultant of two constituent forces, which are in a quiescent state; 
not, however, in the sense that they are no longer active. They 
retain their antagonism, and may be said to work against each 
other in producing a common result. The one counterbalances the 
other, and thus both seem to be at rest. But this equilibrium may 
be disturbed, so that the antagonism may be seen and felt. One 
element may be the stronger, and consequently disturb and disquiet 
the other. We then have to consider " Beauty in the struggle of 
its elements," seeking their rectification. This results from their 
antithetic character, and the object of the struggle is the restora- 
tion of the equilibrium. It may have two forms according as the 
one or the other element is the stronger and preponderates. If 
the idea prevails we have the Sublime. Weisse makes the Sublime 
a movement out of the sphere of the Beautiful into the sphere of 
the Good ; but this would overthrow the conception of the Beauti- 
ful as already established ; for the Sublime and the Beautiful are 
always associated together, belong to the same sphere, and require 
idea and form to go together. Solger makes the Sublime come from 
the Beautiful, representing it as the idea struggling through the 
form without being realized. There seems to be countenance for 
this thought in the fact that after we have the form thus presented in 
geological formations, rugged rocks, abrupt mountains, the cosmos 
follows. So society also presents itself in the history of nations, in 
their origin and progress, before it comes to its normal formation. 



680 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

The more correct view is as we have it in Vischer, in the one 
given above, which includes the Sublime in the sphere of the Beau- 
tiful, not below nor be3^oncl it, but as in a struggle with its ele- 
ments. This gives room for two phases. The first claim presents 
itself on the side of the idea, constituting the Sublime. In this 
case the idea so breaks forth from the object as to overwhelm the 
form, presenting its own infinitude, in opposition to the limitations 
of the form by which it is to be enshrined. The image or form in 
which the idea is presented is made null — annihilated as to its idea. 
But we must not suppose, as we are apt to do, that the idea is 
emancipated from the form, as this would give us merely a logical 
thought. We still communicate with the idea through the form. 
But the idea is brought into a negative relation to the real, — made 
to negate the form. 

It seems to be a contradiction to sa}^ that the idea should anni- 
hilate the form and still be in it. But that is the essential charac- 
teristic of the Sublime; it is there and it is not there. It is always 
vanishing and yet remaining. There is here a new element to be 
considered, that of quantity instead of mere quality. This results 
from the comparison of the objects of the sublime with other objects. 
This is what we call the negativity of the sublime. It ma}^ be two- 
fold, positive or negative. By positive negativity we understand 
the relation of the object to other objects besides itself. The oak 
becomes sublime by comparison with other trees or things or ob- 
jects by negating them, that is, by exposing their magnificence, as 
if they did not exist. 

In negative negativity, the appearance of the idea is mostly sud- 
den, so that it bursts forth upon the mind all at once, even if it be 
formed gradually. There is, then, in the apprehension of the Sub- 
lime a sudden rupture, which is made a distinguishing mark by 
some writers. Both forms of negativity are thus carried forward 
until the idea seems to transcend all form. When we contem- 
plate a great man, we first view him in comparison with other 
men : he makes them appear insignificant. But he will also appear 
to rise above the common conception of hunianUry, and consequently 
above his own form. When such a point is gained, when this point 
is attained, the sublime idea seems to burst the A 7 essel, that is, the 
form in which it is enshrined, but not so as to let the idea escape. 
It is still viewed through the form. Entire privation or vacuity 
does not yet exist, still the mind may regard it as such, as space 
without contents. It is viewed in such a form as entirety to sink 
all other forms out of sight. 



Chap. XLIX] aesthetics 681 

The Sublime manifests itself under various forms. Thus we have 
the objective sublime in space or immensit}^: in time present, past 
and future, or in eternit} 7 ; the sublime in power, or dynamic sub- 
lime; and the subjective sublime in human passion, in the good or 
bad will, as in tragedy. 

As we have seen, Beauty is the union of its two constituent ele- 
ments, its form and animating idea, where both are in a state of 
equipoise. That relation of equilibrium may be disturbed or 
destroyed; in the Sublime the idea preponderates, but if the form 
appears to overwhelm the idea we get the Comic. In neither case 
are the two sides absolutely sundered, for if this were the case, the 
result would be an abstraction on the one hand and something 
monstrous on the other. The case requires that the idea should 
be actually present in the Comic, whilst the form predominates. 
There is such a close relation between the Comic and Sublime, that 
the former can come out only through the latter. The Comic in- 
volves not merely form, but at the same time a rebounding or self- 
assertion on the part of the idea. The disturbance among the ele- 
ments that produce the Sublime is in a measure the relation that 
calls forth the Comic. In one view the two are opposites ; in another 
an inward independence subsists between them. The disturbance 
consequently must first come through the preponderance of the 
idea, and this involves a sort of requisition on the other side to 
assert itself. In the struggle the Sublime has always a tendency 
to fall over into the Comic. The Sublime, therefore, cannot be 
ordinarily pressed too far without dissipating itself in that which 
is just its opposite. The Comic comes into view through the Sub- 
lime, as we acknowledge when we are wont to say that "there is but 
one step between the Sublime and the Ridiculous." 

The Naive, not, however, in the sense of boorish ignorance, is 
extensively sesthetical. True beauty and true sublimity are uncon- 
scious of themselves. We have naivete in both, but it is more 
forcible in the Comic, although it is not of the same account in all 
its spheres. There are only certain times and circumstances in 
which the naive is appropriate. The propriety must be conven- 
tional. In conversation certain terms of respect are employed, yet 
oftentimes without self-possession, they may be contradicted by an 
individual's action or by his real meaning. There may be no hy- 
pocrisy in the case but mere simplicity. Something may be said 
that is contradicted b}^ something of an opposite character. Here 
art is contradicted by nature — the artificial actions and conven- 
tionalities refuted by an under-sense of their own nature. The lat- 
43 



682 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

ter rises up through the former. Thus we get the naive. Both ele- 
ments are present in the same subject ; but the conception of the naive 
requires that there should be culture and not mere boorishness. 

The comic process is comparatively unconscious, as in naivete, 
either by reason of a loaned consciousness, where the two forms 
of consciousness are both in possession of the comic party. The 
terms that meet each other have predominant^ an outward form, 
and partake of the nature of real action, while at the same time 
the general character of the Comic must be maintained. Thus 
we get the Burlesque, which meets us under the character of boor- 
ishness among servants, children and others. It makes its appear- 
ance especially in the Saturnalia of the Italians, among whom it is 
national. But the Comic comes to its expression under a higher 
character in Wit, or still higher in Humor. It shows itself in 
rough jokes, knocking off hats, tripping up feet — a kind of sport, 
consisting not in words but actions at which no refined taste would 
laugh. The Comic in the form of the Burlesque is introduced into 
exhibitions, depending on the relative culture and nationality of 
the people. The Italians are particularly fond of it. In comic 
exhibitions of this kind harlequins and puppets are introduced, 
and one necessary feature is physical deformity or ugliness. Thus 
the harlequin has a great unwieldy form, wears a mask, has a big 
body and other things in accordance. The exhibitions of the 
Comic involve two forms of consciousness meeting in the same 
person. It required a great deal of intelligence to be a court-fool 
in the Middle Ages. 

The Burlesque has place where the process goes forward under a 
mainly outward form, has the character of action, and is thus sim- 
ple and rude. The character of the Comic under this is similar to 
that of Naivete, not having any malice in it. .It serves a good pur- 
pose in society, acting as a safety-valve," carrying off the dissipated 
feeling that could not be set aside in any other wa}^. It is a con- 
servative force. In this form it presents itself under the uncon- 
scious Naive. 

From the absurd or mere fun in this form we pass to the consid- 
eration of Wit. In this we meet with logical reflection, in which 
there is the power of perceiving absurdities that lie bej^ond their out- 
ward palpable form in the hidden recesses of the spirit. Wit finds 
its exercise principally in the sphere of intelligence and will. There 
is room for it under the form of Cynicism, but it must have a differ- 
ent form from that which it has under the Burlesque, inasmuch 
as it is here refined into thought. Wit is not only thought, but it 



Chap. XLIX] aesthetics 683 

has to do with a thought which stands before the mind as a picture. 
The mind fluctuates between the two, the logical conception and 
the aesthetic representation. Language then becomes necessary for 
the exercise of wit, which proceeds from a direct intuitive percep- 
tion and la\ r s hold of the proper image. The latter is picked up 
suddenly in some sphere foreign to the thought and immediately 
and directly brought into connection with it. All here must be 
intuitive and spontaneous. All premeditated jests lose their force. 
Thus the contradictory character of the Comic in general is in- 
sured, by the two forms meeting in one consciousness. All must 
be brief, sudden like a flash, instantaneous. Hence we say that 
"brevity is the soul of Wit." 

Humor is the third form of the Comic. Wit and Humor are often 
confounded, and yet there is a distinction between the two. In the 
latter we have the former advanced to its perfect form, where it 
again partakes also of the nature of Burlesque in a refined form. 
In its manifestation the subject is brought under the power of the 
person by whom Humor is exercised. In the case of Wit there is 
no full communion between the two sides, although there is an effort 
to bring about such a union of the two forms of consciousness, 
but without success. In Humor that difficulty is surmounted. In 
this case the beholder is in a common condition or sympathy with 
him in whom it breaks out, as it is seen to be not malignant as in 
Wit, but a loving spirit. 

Personal existence, which is involved in the exercise of the comic 
process, must always carry in itself the first term of the universal 
process of the Comic, a quasi sublimity, in the way of life, but with 
this first term, greatness, it implies also the second term or the im- 
measurably little. It matters not whether the littleness be an em- 
barrassment or a general sense of contradiction in life. Humor 
always involves a felt contrast between something great and some- 
thing little, and yet it brings the two into full union. The littleness 
may attach itself to the person, to some bodily defect or spiritual 
blemish, and this helps to produce the humorous representation. 

But we ma}^ have it under a more profound view, where the 
humorous feeling connects itself not merely with a separate indi- 
vidual but with nature at large, the individual being only its repre- 
sentative. It then attaches to the observer, and for this purpose 
it is not malicious, but just the opposite. The littleness belongs 
to humanit}^ in general. A large measure of humor has to do with 
the crosses and contradictions of life, and the feeling produced by 
humor will assume a serious character. 



684 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Wit, as we have seen, flashes forth instantaneously, through the 
sudden contrast of opposite terms. Humor is the result of a gentle 
progressive light. The character of Humor is that of a keen per- 
ception with that of reigning sensibility. It blends a lofty feeling 
with one of sadness, which seem to be contradictory, but the two 
are made to meet in one common consciousness. The greatness 
enters into the littleness, making sense in nonsense or mere fun. 
It thus gives rise to a feeling of self-derision, externally repre- 
sented in laughter, where the person who laughs has himself to be 
laughed at as much as the object of his laughter. This gives rise 
to a feeling of sadness. — Generally Humor belongs to aged ex- 
perience, and not to untried youth. It must possess experience in 
trials, and its best representatives have been old men, although the 
young, putting on the airs of old men, may exercise it in a naive 
way. 

Whilst Humor has to do with simple existence in which the two 
forms are made to meet, j T et it carries with it a reference to life 
under a universal view. Where it comes out, littleness or mean- 
ness does not attach exclusively to individuals but to the whole 
race. Here it differs from Wit, which has to do with single exist- 
ences or separate single individuals. Humor, on the other hand, 
comprehends in the individual the image of what is general. Hence 
the personal presence or object becomes the mirror, causing all hu- 
man greatness to appear in conflict with littleness. The one is 
universal^ in contrast with the other, but the contradiction is here 
made to centre in an individual. Humor consists in the fixed habit 
of perceiving this contradiction, and as it comes to include sym- 
pathy with the abnormal world, it awakens a feeling of sadness. 
There cannot, therefore, be any true humor except as it is tinged 
with this state of mind. 

The process, however, does not end here. Its design is to bring 
about a union of the two sides. Humor cannot stop or rest in a 
mere feeling of sadness, but seeks to carry us over to harmony in 
another view. The littleness in the greatness, and vice-versa, cause 
a feeling of forebearing towards the contradiction, and from a feel- 
ing of love seeks to place the person on good terms with himself 
and others. It sees things with a double vision, throwing all things 
into disorder, and finally bringing harmon}^ out of the confusion. 
The union, however, is not brought about hy a flash, but is a con- 
tinuous process. — The language of humor partakes of the nature of 
mental derangement, because it gets beyond the range of common 
Sense in taking up contradictions and forcing them into view. The 



Chap. XLIX] aesthetics 685 

old court-fools, so called because their thinking ran counter to com- 
mon sense, oftentimes embodied the greatest wisdom in their say- 
ings. — Socrates was regarded as a transcendentalist walking among 
the clouds, not so much because of his metaphysical speculations, 
as because he had such a deep sense of the contradictions by which 
he was surrounded. Diogenes was called a "raving Socrates." 

In our inquiries thus far, our attention has not been directed to 
objects of beauty in the natural world, but simply to the constitu- 
tion of beauty itself as a preparatory step. The next step in the 
inquiry is, to consider in what forms of actual existence the world 
of beauty is to be found. We may seem to have a sufficient answer 
to this question when we say that it meets us in the world of nature 
at large. But it has long been felt that this is not sufficient or sat- 
isfactoiy ; because, however the presence of beauty meets us in the 
actual world, it cannot be actualized except by a power from within 
us. The animal cannot see beauty anywhere, because it has no 
power of apprehending the objects of nature, however beautiful 
they may be to us. 

Where then is the world of beauty to be found ? The answer to 
this question has been given, that it is not to be found in nature 
but in mind, or in the idealized power of the mind. This, however, 
may be pressed so far as to make no account of nature at all. 
Beauty would then hold not in nature nor the idea as an objective 
existence, but in the ideals of things, that is, the idealization of 
natural objects, by which we put into things what is not in them 
by nature, which is a mere abstraction. 

Neither of these views is satisfactoiy, although there is truth 
in each. We cannot say that the outward has nothing to do with 
beauty, because it must always be before us in some presence. 
Neither can we deny that it is independent of all idealization. The 
true actualization of beauty combines the two, giving us a world 
that is not nature only nor thought only, but a new creation, by 
which the idealization of the mind is projected by it back upon na- 
ture, and as a result of this we have Art. — Here we see the differ- 
ence between the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The first has 
to do with the Will, the second with the Intelligence, and the last 
with the Imagination. — In order to understand therefore this world 
of Art,we must consider beaiuvy as it exists in nature, realiter ; and 
then as it exists in the mind, idealiter. — But this brings us to the 
limit which necessity has set for us here in the further presentation 
of sesthetical studies, according to Dr. Nevin's lectures. 



CHAPTER L 

WHEN Dr. Nevin was president of the College at Mercersburg, 
he taught Moral Philosophy as the Science of Christian 
Ethics, the same as had been taught by his predecessor, Dr. Rauch. 
According to this system all true morality must come from the 
union of the human and the divine will, brought about in a truly 
moral man b}^ Christianit}\ The divine law, b}^ the process of re- 
generation, enters the human will and becomes its own law or active 
power in all of its determination. Ethics thus considered is a 
branch of Theology. But it ma} r be treated also as a branch of 
Philosophy, and as such it becomes Philosophical Ethics, accord- 
ing to which morality is to be studied in its rise and progress as an 
intuition of human consciousness, apart from any direct assistance 
from Theology or the Bible. It does not ignore either the one or 
the other. It is a free activit} 1 " of the human mind, and it may be just 
as Christian as any sj^stem of Theological Ethics or even more so, 
especially if the theological element is one-sided or mechanical. 
Thus we may have a speculative sj^stem of Philosophy, which 
may be Christian or antichristian, just as the author is pervaded 
by the spirit of religion or irreligion. It is precisely so with a 
sj^stem of Philosophical Ethics. "When properly treated it is in 
fact the complement of Christian Ethics. This it became in the 
hands of Dr. Nevin. 

He concluded to teach Ethics as a philosophical science in the 
College at Lancaster, because it had made important strides in 
Germany after the death of Rauch in 1841. Accordingly, he se- 
cured the latest and the best works, bearing on this science, re- 
produced their leading thoughts on the subject, and wrought out his 
own sj^stem in a course of regular lectures to the students. He re- 
garded with favor the works of the 3 T ounger Fichte — J. H. Fichte, — 
whose philosophy on the whole presents the best school, that sprang 
up after the time of the elder Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Herbart. 
— The outline of Dr. Nevin's lectures here given is based on the 
notes of his students, but more particularly on the lectures of Dr. 
Thomas G. Appel, his successor in the presidency of the College. 
As in the case of ^Esthetics, we give a summary of the topics dis- 
cussed, and then consider the more prominent general principles 
underlying the science. 

(686) 



Chap. L] ethics 68*7 

I. — Lemmata or Postulates derived from Metaphysics, Psychol- 
ogy, and Practical Philosophy, underlying the construction of a 
science of Ethics. — Ethical Ideas. — The Idea of Bight, internally 
and externally considered. — Its actualization. — The Idea of Social 
Integration. — The Idea of Religion as the bond of union between 
the two other Ideas. — The Freedom of the Will. — Stages of Will. 
— The Natural Will in relation to the Good. — Its Transition to a 
higher stage of character. — Character in relation to the Good. — 
The highest Good in the psychological and in the ethical sense. — . 
Character in relation to personality. — Its tendency to self-preser- 
vation, as an appetency. — Self-assertion or selfishness. — Sense of 
Honor. — Ethical Character. — The Supreme Good. 

II. — -Virtue. — Its relation to Duty and the Good. — Its Contents. 
— As an Endowment. — As an emptying of Self in body and mind. 
— As a moral wakefulness, defensive and progressive. — Virtue as a 
sj^stem. — Love or Enthusiasm. — Steadfastness. — Wisdom. — Con- 
siderateness or Circumspection. — The Conception of Duty. — Its 
Relation to Virtue. — Three stages of Duty — the External, the In- 
ternal, and their union or reconciliation. — Duties to ourselves, 
Self-preservation, Self-perfection. — Duties to others, general and 
particular. — Duties of Vocation, absolute and relative. — The inter- 
nal Relation of the three orders. — Collision of Duties, 

III. — The Good. — Development of the Idea of Right. — The 
rights of personality, of life, of the body, of self-support, of per- 
sonal-liberty, of civil and political freedom, of ethical and spiritual 
freedom, of marriage, of property, of traffic, of self-defence, of a civil 
trial. — Penalties as a satisfaction, viewed from a moral stand-point. 
— The actualization of the Idea of Social Integration. — The Idea of 
Marriage and its duties. — The Family. — The Right of Inheritance. 
— The Idea of the State. — Its development, as an Organism. — Po- 
litical Constitutions. — Civil Power. — Popular Representation.— 
Public Opinion. — The Civil Administration. — The Rights of Peace 
and War. — Treaties and Diplomacy. — The Bond connecting States. 
— The development of universal intercourse. — World Citizenship. 
— The Arts. — Sciences. — Intellectual Culture. — The Humanities. — 
Society. — Association for Humanitarian Purposes. — Friendship. — 
The Actualization of the Idea of Religion. — Its Relation to Mo- 
rality. — Its Embodiment in the Church. — The Organism of the 
Church. — Its Relation to the State, and to the Family. — The uni- 
versal, historical and permanent Church. — Considered as the Real- 
ization of the Idea of Humanit}^. — Ethics fundamental to a true 
Theodicy and Eschatology. 



688 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Ethics, or the science of the Good, is closely related to other 
sciences, such as Metaphysics, Psychology and the Physical 
Sciences. As we cannot refer to these at length. we borrow from 
them certain Lemmata or Postulates such as we need for our pur- 
pose. 

1. The universe as a whole, including the starry heavens, is a 
sj'stem that looks to some absolute end. 

2. For the Earth man is this end. Nature looks towards him as a 
spiritual existence for its completion. It is not sufficient in itself, 
nor complete. This is evident, if we only consider what it is in the 
light of intelligence. — Man is the end of nature; not merely as an 
individual, for as such he is simply a part of one vast organism, 
but in the sense of humanity, which, as a whole, comes to a proper 
expression only in history, and the world, therefore, has its end in 
the results of history. 

3. Humanity itself is essentially one as spirit. This carries us 
back to an ultimate existence in which humanity stands as a whole 
or a unity, which is spiritual, and as such differs from a mere nat- 
ural unity. All individual existences in the human world stand 
in this unit}^ of spiritual existence, which is bound in its origin to 
God. This is just the same as sa} T ing that man is a social being. 
It is something that we might consider as resulting merely from an 
external likeness or similarity among men; but it implies, in fact, 
that in the development of consciousness, in the case of each indi- 
vidual, there is a reference to this ideal unity, which comes to an 
expression in his existence. 

4. Man has a psj^chic existence, because his animal organization 
is animated by a soul, which differs from the animal soul, and is 
the result of spirit in the centre of his consciousness. Here na- 
ture and the world are brought together, and in man worked up by 
a process which is different from that in the case of other creatures. 
The immediate end here is self-preservation, which as a power is 
the ruling principle. Individuality is here ruled by the distinctions 
of race, nationality, sex. and so on, which run out into endless 
peculiarities. Xo two persons can be found who look exactly alike. 

5. The individuality in man has a spiritual side also in his nature, 
which is different from that which has its origin in nature. The 
Hegelian philosoplrv on its pantheistic side traces individuality 
only through nature. — God comes to self-consciousness in this way 
only through man, and we thus lose all support for the immortality 
of individual men. In opposition to this, we must recognize a law 
of individualization on the spiritual side of humanity, a genius or 



Chap. L] ethics 689 

an original thought of God, in every man. The natural and the 
spiritual are organically joined together in him as mutual counter- 
parts or mirrors. 

6. In actualizing his individuality from the spiritual side the in- 
visible world meets him in the form of ideas, not notions or concep- 
tions, but in forms of spiritual powers and existences in the True, 
the Beautiful, the Good, and in Religion. Each of these has an ob- 
jective, spiritual constitution of its own. Truth is not merely a true 
thought, not merely a correspondence of thought with the nature 
of things, but a real substantial existence. The same is true of the 
Beautiful. The Good, as actualized in the Will, is also an idea, 
comes from the divine will, and affords the possibility of love. Here 
we come to the practical side of man's spiritual nature, by Kant 
denominated the Practical Reason, where he finds the possibility 
of positing the Divine, the Absolute or the idea of God. 

There is a difference in the three fundamental ideas referred to. 
The Good seems to be the highest. There is an obligation pertain- 
ing to the will of a higher character than that which attaches to 
the True and the Beautiful. It manifests itself in what Kant calls 
the Categorical Imperative, as contained in the words, Thou shalt. 
To contradict the truth gives us error ; in the case of the Beautiful, 
ugliness is the result of a contradiction ; and in the case of the Good, 
sin in a deep sense. — This imperative belongs to the will of the in- 
dividual as such, and gives us what for him ought to be that which 
is right. It is not something empirical ; it does not come to him 
in any external way as the result of any previous theory ; but is an 
a priori intuition. Hence we get the Idea of Bight as entering 
into the idea of the good. 

But the individual will is related to other wills by a common 
origin. Mankind is an organism, ethically as well as intellectually 
and ph^sicalty considered. Man is born into the world in the 
midst of social relations, and these relations necessarily enter into 
the development of his moral being. This gives rise to the second 
ethical idea in the process of actualizing the Good, which may 
be called Social Integration. As the branch takes up into itself 
the life of the tree, and by so doing becomes active in converting 
it into woody fibre, so the individual develops his moral being in 
organic union with the life of society, back of which is the ideal 
unity of the race. 

The completion of the ideas referred to is found in Religion, 
which is likewise an a priori intuition in man. It is a part of his 
nature, something universal in the race, and grows out of his yearn- 



690 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

ing for communion with God. There is only one absolute religion, 
but all subjective religion stands in one common want of man or of 
humanity at large. Hence the three ethical ideas, Right, Social 
Integration and Religion, demand the first consideration in all 
ethical inquiries. 

The idea of the Right implies obligation to that which ma}- be en- 
forced, and so it might be thought that it is in conflict with the 
idea of Freedom as this holds in the principle of love. But there is 
in reality here no conflict. Love must be lawful, just as law em- 
bodies love. — The idea of freedom requires that we should take into 
consideration the reciprocal relation of the individual and society, 
the particular and the general. Rights have reference primarily to 
the individual, and are what he requires in order to unfold his being. 
But in this process he must have reference not only to himself, but 
to others also. There are restrictions here which he must recog- 
nize, and in this he finds his freedom. Such limitation is not the 
result of any social contract or agreement, that the individual shall 
surrender certain natural rights, as the}" are sometimes called, for 
the general good. This theoiy is based on the idea that man is 
first an individual aifd that society comes afterwards. There can- 
not, however, be any such precedence of the one over the other. 
The two are organically- related and exist together. In one sense 
society is first, and the individual comes in as its product, as in the 
case of the family, so that there can be no natural individual rights 
that can be recognized in such form. The relation here is that of 
personalities and must be free, not in the order of nature or of neces- 
sity, but spiritual, and is therefore one of freedom. — It is not 
meant here that freedom is the same as right, but that it involves 
right. The relation of the one to the other is similar to that of two 
concentric circles, the one involving the other, and the one only a 
widening of the other. The idea of right is self-asserting; but there 
is in man a process of drawing of one individual towards another, 
so that both may find their necessary complements. As in the 
planetary S3'stem, each one is the subject of a centripetal and cen- 
trifugal force. 

From what has been said, it is clear that Right involves a move- 
ment, and is consequent!}- historical. It does not come to pass 
through a priori rules or regulations, devised on some intellectual 
scheme — on a procrustean bed — to which society must then adapt 
itself. On the contrary it is to be regarded rather as the result of 
an historical process, in which the universal adapts itself to given 
cases. The general idea is indeed a priori, but its forms of manifes- 



Chap. L] ethics 691 

tation come in the way of an historical movement. The former 
concretes itself in customs and habits, and these gradually acquire 
the power of laws. If then we inquire into the origin of laws, we 
shall see that in one view they all have their origin in the idea of 
Right; but in another view, they take their origin in the rudiment- 
ary developments of society. It is difficult to say just when and 
where they begin. Hence the study of Law has its beginning and 
foundation in history, and here history and theoiy come together. 
This is the problem with which Blackstone is mainty occupied. 

The conceptions of law and equity are not necessarily opposed to 
each other, but are both necessary to the idea of Right. In the 
nature of the case laws can never be finished or be complete ; neither 
can they be universal, just because they are the forms of applying 
the idea of the Right, and the applications vary. The most funda^ 
mental laws are of this character. Hence the habeas corpus may 
be suspended and the pardoning power enlarged. 

The formation of laws primarily is not so much a matter of intel- 
lectual calculation as of intuitive inspiration. The general con- 
sciousness rules in this case as a kind of instinct. Some one, or some 
few, catch the spirit of laws by a sort of inspiration, in the sense 
that they are inspired by the idea of Right, and they become law- 
givers and law-framers, such as Solon and L}-curgus, who were 
thought to be in communion with the gods. — Law then comes be- 
fore us in three different forms, as Common Law, Statute Law, and 
Jurisprudence. 

Social completion grounds itself in an original relationship back 
of existence in time, in the Divine mind or appointment. As such 
in the form of idea, it involves integration, the normal relationship 
of man in the order of society. The idea of Right is self-asserting, 
but there is in man a process of attraction b}^ which one individual 
is drawn towards another, so that both may find their complements 
in each other. The individual, as he stands in society, is the sub- 
ject both of a centripetal and a centrifugal force. — The integration of 
men into social union is promoted by such feelings as pity, compas- 
sion, benevolence, humility, reverence, gratitude, mutual affection. 

The third or highest ethical idea is found in Beligion. We can 
easily see that morality never becomes complete or actualized in 
itself without religion. It is a sphere in itself, and as such we 
must stud}^ it as a framework which religion takes up, leavens, and 
penetrates with vitality and life. This will appear from a con- 
sideration of the relation of Religion to our personal existence. We 
have various faculties, such as intellect, will, affections and so on. 



692 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

These are innate and are not conferred upon us by Christianity or 
religion in general. But Religion, especially in the form of Chris- 
tianity, gives them new life and power. So morality bases itself 
upon our moral nature and relations in societ}-, as these involve the 
idea of Right and of Social Integration. But Religion is thebroad- 
er sphere in which they become complete, without which morality 
must remain defective and incomplete. Under one view, Religion 
or God might come first in a system of Ethics, because as we have 
seen, the end rules the beginning; but we ma} T pursue the other 
course also, as we do in the present ethical inquiry. 

Moral existence consists in the right development of the powers 
and forces that are at hand in man's moral nature. The} T are nat- 
ural instincts on the one hand, and ideal on the other by which we 
do not mean that they are not substantial. The} 7 simply wait for 
actualization through the will. This brings forward the difficult 
question of the nature of the will, as difficult and nrysterious as 
that of pure thinking in Psycholog}^. 

The question pertains to the Liberty of the Will. — In its consid- 
eration, it will help us if we keep before our minds the close rela- 
tion and resemblance of life in man and in nature below man. The 
first point here lies in the nature of self-determination as charac- 
teristic of the will. Does this imphv that the act is causeless ? 
Does the will act without a cause ? Are we carried beyond the re- 
lation of cause and effect when we reach the sphere of the will ? 
This is sometimes maintained, but it will be found that it is based 
on a misunderstanding of what is meant by causation as applied 
to will. If there were no causation here, we should have only 
chance, the result of indifference. There is a sense in which we do 
get beyond causation as found in nature, but that is when we reach 
the true sphere of the will. 

Necessit3 T may be conceived of as something outward or exter- 
nal, which would destroy the nature of Will. But it ma} 7 also be 
viewed as internal, as entering into the constitution of the Will 
itself, and then liberty and necessity come together and become 
one, which constitutes the highest conception of Freedom. 

Even in the forms of existence in nature, we may see that caus- 
ation is not altogether external, but that it involves also a deter- 
mination that comes from within, which makes room for variety in 
individuation. In the plant, for instance, there is an internal prin- 
ciple that determines its growth and development, in the way of 
antagonism against external forces. The outward here is the con- 
dition, which acts in the way of excitation or stimulus. What the 



Chap. L] ethics 693 

plant is to be or to become is determined by an inner law. In the 
animal we see this inward power still more active, involving many 
possibilities, whose specific actualization depends on a determina- 
tion from within. So it is in the case of the bird when it is fright- 
ened by the report of a gun. Its course is determined by some- 
thing in its life, back of what corresponds to consciousness. 

Men may act at times without conscious reason or purpose, yet 
there is that back of consciousness which determines their actions ; 
and choice implies a preference, for where there is no preference 
there is no choice. But it must not be supposed that it would fol- 
low from this that a man's character ought then, like the motions 
of the planets, to be fixed. A particular volition may be fixed, but 
it becomes such because of what is back of it in the individual life 
and character. This, however, only shows that will depends on char- 
acter, which is something pliable. It is formed by the individual 
himself, and ma}^ therefore be changed, although not easily at certain 
stages. We say that motivation determines the will, but that does 
not tell whence comes the motivation or character. This is a diffi- 
cult question to answer. For the present it must suffice to point 
out two erroneous answers ; one is Determinism, in the sense of ex- 
ternal restraint, as in the theory of Edwards, which leads to Fatal- 
ism ; the other is Indifferentism, which destroys the idea of char- 
acter, and makes the will the sport of mere chance. 

The genesis and normal development of the will involves a three- 
fold process. At first it is a mere natural impulse. In this stage, 
it is one with desire or appetite, and instinct is its ruling principle. 
It shows itself in this kind of impulse in little children. There are 
indeed even here inward tendencies at work, produced by outward 
circumstances, but nevertheless prompted from within. 

A higher stage of the will presents itself where intelligence in- 
tervenes between it and impulse or appetite. Passion may point 
in one direction and the reason in another. The will may act ac- 
cording to reason, or the contrary, and it may be either good or bad. 

The highest stage in the process is at the point where the will 
becomes possessed or inspired with the absolute idea of the Good, 
which then takes possession of it. It then comes to move for the 
first time in the sphere of freedom, which lies in being necessitated 
by the Good, and not the reverse as some suppose. Where the 
former does not take place, there is the presence of an enslavement. 
In both . cases there is a motivation ; yet we feel that where the 
Good takes possession of the will, it gives it strength and power, 
whereas in the other case it is conscious of weakness. In evil it is 



694 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

weakness itself, enslaved b3 T a power which is foreign to its very 
nature and constitution. 

We speak of virtue in plants or medicine, and Caesar used the 
term virtus to express courage or valor in war. The word comes 
from the same root as the Latin term for a man, vir, as distinguish- 
ed from a woman, and it thus has the primary signification of 
strength. In Ethics it is used to designate the inward qualification 
of the mind for an ethical life. Its presence in the soul starts with 
the un-selfing of the will through the inspiration of the ethical idea, 
which is a wider existence than the individual man. 

It enters into the will and takes possession of it in such a way 
as to emancipate it from the power of mere nature. As soon as the 
mind comes to the determination or resolution of making the 
supreme good the end of life then virtue begins. It is not a fixed 
state of the mind, in the sense of standing still, but as Kant sa3's, 
a process capable of perfectibility. As such it looks to action or 
duty. The two things, virtue and dutj^, are joined together in a 
concrete union. In this view virtue belongs not merely to the in- 
dividual, but to societj^ also and to the age at large, where it ex- 
presses a standing qualification for fulfilling the requirements of 
ethical life. Under this view it is, in its fundamental character, 
an indivisible state or power, so that we cannot properly speak of 
different virtues. It is right-mindedness of soul, } T et its application 
admits of an endless phenomenology. There is no such thing as 
temperance, chastity, or courage — separately taken — except as the} T 
are grounded in virtue as one. 

Yirtue holds only in its full ethical character; not in the first or 
second stage in the. genesis of the will ; it begins where the reso- 
lution is formed to make the supreme good the supreme end of life. 
It may be feeble in its beginning, but it grows in power as it ad- 
vances. It is a power or force in the will, which enables it to act, 
and then it involves the power or art of adaptabilitj". The adapta- 
tion is called out by actual occasions in life — the virtue is one, the 
adaptations endless. Hence it carries in it the character of Art, the 
art of virtue, which as such unvv be learned, as it is ever diversified 
and new. In its tendenc}^ to manifest itself in its manifold adapta- 
tions, it rmiy be divided like temperaments, or colors in the rain- 
bow which blend into each other through many shades. 

Whether virtue can be taught is a question as old as the time of 
Socrates, and can be answered in both ways without involving any 
contradiction in the two opposite answers. So it is correct to say 
that it is to be regarded as a gift or endowment as well as an acqui- 



Chap. L] ethics 695 

sition gained by practice. Primarily it comes from God, the spirit- 
ual side of our existence, through the channel of ethical ideas. — Dr. 
Nevin's lectures involve this origin of virtue, and it is character- 
istic of all his ethical thinking to regard it in this relation. With 
him it was a substantial, real essence, not merely a theory or an 
intellectual notion or abstraction. Such a view, however, makes 
room for an organic growth in virtue, and excludes the concep- 
tion of a mechanical aggregation of external activities. As a gift 
it involves activity and progress on the part of the mind or will. 

Virtue begins where ethical character begins ; not from the side 
of nature, but from the spiritual order, where the Good manifests 
itself. When the will begins to asserts itself over against nature 
and self, under the inspiration of the Good, then we have virtue. 
Therefore, properly speaking, there can be no such a thing as phys- 
ical virtue, because as such it can exist only in the sphere of the 
Ethical. — As a process it may be said to begin in the purpose or 
resolution to pursue the Supreme Good; it then passes on to the 
point of practical application in the discharge of duty; and finally, 
inward harmony is the result. 

In this entire process, it is the idea of the Good that is the source 
of the moral inspiration, which does not come from the physical or 
spiritual side of man's existence, but from beyond itself in the 
Absolute or Good. — Virtue must come before us as the process 
of un-selfing the will. This means self-denial, or taking up the 
cross. — It is a stadium of human life, as experience shows, only in 
the element of the Christian religion, which is called for by the 
Ethical as its completion and consummation. 

The un-selfing of the will under the inspiration of virtue has re- 
gard to both sides of a man's life, to body as well as soul. Hence 
culture or the art of virtue takes its rise. The physical side calls 
for dietetics and gymnastics ; the spiritual side, for moral culture, 
which implies the subjugation of the natural will, by bringing it 
under the dominion of truth or ethical ideas. The mere private 
will must be brought to harmonize with a higher or general will, 
which is the true will. Its authority must be internalized by disci- 
pline and culture. At first it is something external, and as such it 
must be exercised by parents; otherwise children incur a heavy 
loss. When they meet outward opposition they are unprepared for 
it, and they become transgressors. Physical force must be called 
into requisition. To the child the rod is a sacrament — of a nega- 
tive character. 

There may be a classification of virtues just as with tempera- 



696 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

ments. Cardinal Virtues are such as belong to virtue as a whole, to 
which particular virtues sustain an organic relation. All these are 
indivisible, are bound inseparably together, so that where the one 
exists the others are also present. Temperance in drinking is no 
temperance at all, unless it is accompanied by moderation in all 
things. — Among the Greeks the Cardinal virtues were wisdom, forti- 
tude, righteousness and temperance; Spenser, in his Faery Queen, 
enumerates six of them: holiness or religion, temperance, chastity, 
friendship, justice and courtesy; and in the old Church theolog}^ 
they consisted of faith, hope and charity. Classifications may thus 
vary. What is most important here is to bear in mind that virtue 
has two sides, the outward and the inward, and that the latter in- 
cludes a right estimation of ethical relations and the power itself 
in given relations. 

After Dr. Nevin had thus anahvzed virtue into its elements, he 
goes on to consider duties as they are derived from the three ethical 
ideas which underlie a system of Ethics and are the basis of all 
morality, namely the Right, Social Integration and Religion. 
Our limits here will allow us to state only what he has to say in 
reference to the last of the three. 

The Ethical Idea, says Dr. Nevin, involves a devout sense of 
God, as we have it in religion, in the full sense of the term. We 
cannot say that the moral is made necessary by any outward law, 
but that it assumes this character bj~ the inward constitution of 
man. The latter, however, is grounded in a higher and wider being 
than itself, in the being of Gocl. Only in this higher relation to 
God can we become complete, and hence there is no true science 
of morality that does not take into view the idea of our inward re- 
lationship to God, as the necessary ground of our existence here 
in nature. This is what the Germans call Die Innigkeit Gottes. 

It is easy to see how the actualization of the moral idea can never 
be complete except as it is viewed in this relationship to God. We 
feel that there is something wanting in our nature, aDd that our 
human life is an ideal that is never fully realized. Nowhere is the 
harmony perfect. Men have dispositions to assist each other, but 
circumstances come in and pervert the exercise of these benevolent 
dispositions. In this way and for this reason, we have the feeling 
of a social obstruction, hindering us in assisting others, and also 
the feeling of a want in ourselves that fails to be satisfied. 

In looking at human life under this view, it would seem to in- 
volve an entire want of satisfaction or rest. It is necessary, there- 
fore, that we should rise into some higher sphere of existence, 



Chap. L] ethics 697 

which shall be felt to possess the necessary power to remove the 
obstruction, supply the want and integrate the deficiency. This 
we find only in religion, in our God-consciousness. This makes 
room for love in its absolute universal character, as there is 
otherwise no room for it. Our love for our fellowmen meets with 
these obstructions, which could not be overcome, were it not for 
the fact we can get beyond our natural consciousness into a true 
God-consciousness. There can be no true union among men, un- 
less it is at the same time a union through God-consciousness. Con- 
fidence, faith, hope and charity spring from this relation to God as 
our common ground or origin. In this way the ultimate perfection 
of our nature is anticipated. Hence room has been made for the 
Church and a new order of communion and fellowship, inaugurated 
for this purpose. There are different orders of association among 
men, just as there are different wants to be satisfied, as in the arts, 
sciences or business in general. 

But religion goes beyond these, as it takes in all the relations of. 
life under the view of its unnry in God. For this the Church is 
something more comprehensive and deeper than all other forms of 
communion, because it comprises the universality of our nature; 
and for this reason all those other forms of associations, such as of 
letters, arts or sciences, ought to be comprehended in it. This is 
what we mean b} 7 the Catholic Church. 

We have now considered the idea of Social Co-integration, the 
second idea of the Good. In looking back over the course over 
which we have passed in the treatment of the social order of life, 
in the Family, in the State, and in Humanity in its general ethical 
features, with their subdivisions, we cannot fail to see the broad 
sweep which this idea takes, and how far reaching the principles of 
Ethics extend in relation to the whole field of social science in 
every view. Many of the most vital problems of life gather here, in 
statesmanship, law, and in what are called questions of moral reform. 
— Dr. T. G. Appel ends his last lecture on Ethics as follows: 

Lastly, we have to consider the idea of religion, which in one view 
would lead us directly into the region of theology, and that would 
take us beyond the limits of this science. Its consideration in an}^ 
case must bring us to the close of Ethics, because we have here only 
the transition to that science. In one view the science has to do 
directly with the idea of religion, because as a science, apart from 
revelation, it must acknowledge that the religious nature of man is 
the highest department of his being, and that his relation to God 
has to do vitally with all of his ethical relations. So far even phil- 
44 



698 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

osophy must recognize the idea of religion, which is just as uni- 
versal and necessary as all other ethical ideas. 

The idea of God is in all men, no matter how it is explained, and 
man's relation to Him enters fundamentally into ever}^ problem of 
life, whether of the individual or of society. Man cannot live with- 
out religion, and the same is true of society at large. Man has a 
religious nature, revealing itself in his sense of dependence on an 
Absolute Being, as we see in natural reverence and faith. That 
much we may learn from Socrates and Plato without the Bible. 
Yiewing man in his social capacity, where can we find a nation or 
a people in history that does not possess some kind of religion? It 
is an interest, therefore, that pertains to science and philosophy as 
well as theolog}^, the two occupying common ground. 

Therefore religion means the union of man with God, and this con- 
stitutes the most fundamental of all man's relations. So much the 
profoundest thought of the world has always acknowledged. To 
oppose or attempt to ignore the idea of religion, therefore, betrays 
not only an unphilosophic but a shallow mind. To do so is in 
truth something unnatural and immoral. We speak not here of 
any particular form of religion, such as Christianity, but of the 
general religious idea. And we may also add that no honest and 
earnest mind can oppose Christianity, without being prepared to 
present what it conceives to be a better religion. Where this is 
wanting, all such opposition can command no claims to respect. 

What then is the relation of ethics to religion, which for us is 
Christianity ? The first point to be considered is that morality, 
according to what has been said, growing out of the ideas of Right 
and Social- Co-integration, cannot actualize its own ideal without 
religion. This is apparent whether we have regard to the individ- 
ual or to society as a whole. If we contemplate the ethical consti- 
tution of the mere individual, as actualizing itself in right charac- 
ter, what is more apparent? Ideally we find that this depends on 
the absolute control of the will over nature, in the way of virtue 
and duty under the inspiration of love. But where is the individ- 
ual to be found that realizes this ideal in his life ? It is still 
more apparent in the utter inability of the world in its social order 
to actualize a complete morality. If there is anything in which it 
has failed, it is to be found in its abortive efforts to establish a 
right social economy. From the inner circle of the family with all 
its hallowed associations out into the widening circles of the State 
and the race, how far has the world come short of realizing its own 
ideal! We have beautiful ideals, from Plato's Republic to More's 



Chap. L] ethics 699 

Utopia, but practically only broken wrecks, strewed all along the 
pathwaj^ of historjr. In this nineteenth century, the same old social 
problems are still struggling for solution. 

The difficulty lies not so much in the sphere of the intellect as 
in the sphere of the will, just in that sphere in which the science of 
Ethics has its domain. As a consequence, after man has portrayed 
intellectually or scientifically his own high ideal, there is no power 
of will to reduce it to outward actualization. The higher and bet- 
ter, indeed, this ideal becomes, the more painful is the sense of ina- 
bility to realize it — the wider the chasm becomes that is to be 
bridged over. This in one view is a melancholy thought. But in 
another view it is of an immense advantage and a profound signif- 
icance, as it serves to bring with it a sense of want, that is to be 
satisfied only in something higher, which is religion. Man's rela- 
tions to God must be rightly established, and that alone can bring 
with it the right establishment and actual realization of all ethical 
relations in the constitution of humanity. This is the lesson which 
philosophy teaches. 

A second thought growing out of the one just presented, and 
closely allied to it, is that religion for man must be redemptive in 
its character, as something necessary for the completion of his life. 
Such a sense of want carries with it likewise a sense of guilt. This 
is in fact the testimony of alJ religions. Else why their sacrifices 
and prophylactic rites? Else why the cleansing in the Ganges, the 
lives sacrificed in its waters or under the wheels of Juggernaut? 
All religions point in one way or another to the necessity of a Re- 
deemer, to complete the redemption called for. The unconscious 
prophecies of heathenism no less than the inspired prophecies of 
Judaism point to such a Redeemer. Trench in his Hulsean Lec- 
tures presents these unconscious prophecies of heathenism in an in- 
teresting light. 

Redemption carries with it necessarily also the idea of regenera- 
tion, for redemption includes not simply an external deliverance 
from a sense of guilt and the power of evil, but likewise the elevation 
and perfection of our human life. Thus we are compelled at every 
point to look for a religion, which claims and possesses the ability 
to bring help in this way to the world's helpless condition. And 
this ability we find only in Christ, the God-man, and in the religion 
which He introduced into history. 

Religion, however, in order to elevate man's nature to its proper 
degree of completion, must be social. Just as we do not get social 
completion ethically by combining externally the morality of in- 



TOO AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

dividuals, but must have two factors, society and the individual, so 
Christianity must present itself as something general as well as 
particular. As such it presents itself in the idea of the Christian 
Church. Human life must be redeemed generically as well as in- 
dividual^. The regenerated life of the individual, therefore, can 
become complete only as he stands in organic union with the king- 
dom of divine grace, the kingdom of heaven, as the Lord calls it, 
in which life flows from its ever-living head to all the members. 

Moral science postulates the necessity of religion, as we have 
seen, and Christianity supplies the want. But how are the want 
and the supply brought together? — We may conceive of religion as 
a spiritual power coming into the domain of our ethical life in order 
to bring it to completion. It elevates the family, and thus aids it 
to actualize its own ideal, and it does the same for the State as well 
as for art, science, and humanity in all its natural relations. As the 
world below man would be an abortion without man, so man needs 
the incoming of the Supernatural in order to complete the idea of 
his mundane life. — According to Hegel and Schleiermacher this is 
the whole of its office. The notion that religion is a spiritual power 
intended simply to aid in man's social completion has entered largely 
into modern thought, but this is essentially humanitarianism, and 
in the end must tend to undermine the true idea of Christianity. — 
Whilst religion does complete the family and the State, the arts and 
the sciences, with the leaven of a new life, } T et this is not its chief 
end. That is to be reached, not in the earthly but in the heavenly 
state. What that is, it is the office of divine revelation to teach us, 
and to this both reason and our religious instincts alike testify. 
We might rather reverse the order and say that the end of the 
State and of our whole social life finds its ultimatum in the Church. 
Or, perhaps, we might better say, that the object of Christianity is 
to take up into itself our earthfy life and bring it to its completion 
in the Kingdom of God in the supernatural, spiritual world. This 
means that religion or Christianity is not a means to an end be- 
3^ond itself, but the end itself. 

Religion thus is not an interest that stands apart from or above 
the ethical relations of men. Such isolation indeed would lead to 
serious error; but whilst it infuses a new life into all of man's 
earthty relations, and, therefore, nothing truly human is foreign to 
it, yet its own chief end is to elevate man and the world to their 
true and final destination in the eternal world. This view, however, 
carries us be3 r ond science to revelation, to which Ethics and all 
other sciences are simply handmaidens. 



CHAPTER LI 

IN the year 1870, when Dr. Nevin wrote and reviewed his " Own 
Life" in the light which he then possessed, he was at the zenith 
of his intellectual and spiritual powers. He was President of a 
college, was studying and teaching the various branches of philos- 
ophy, with a steady eye upon their bearings on the Christian relig- 
ion and theology, and with a prayerful outlook also upon the signs 
of the times. He was, therefore, in a mature state of mind to give 
an intelligent view of the progress that he had made in divine 
knowledge, and to define the theological position in which he wished 
to stand at that time in the estimation of the public. B}' some his 
life had come to be regarded as made up largely of contradictions, 
in which one part was inconsistent with the other, without any pos- 
sibility of their reconciliation. 

But he himself was not aware of any real want of harmony in 
his mind as it had unfolded itself. He held that there was a common 
life underlying all that seemed to be changeful in his history, a pro- 
cess of growth or development out of that old Reformed life in 
which he had been born, involving a struggle with another form of 
religion that was constantly obtruding itself upon his experience; 
and that, in the end, there was a complete victory of the former 
over the latter. So he explicitly saj^s, and so he himself believed. 

All true developments, which are not mere changes or external 
progress, at one time or another, manifest such apparent contradic- 
tions. They are governed by laws of their own, vital and free, 
which are not always easily detected by the best judges at the 
time. Take for instance the case of David, the son of Jesse, once 
the chief of a band of idle, desperate characters out in the moun- 
tain retreats or hiding places of Judea, and then compare him with 
David on his throne, the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God's 
heart, leading the hosts of Israel. Here there was growth, and 
in reality a consistent development from the slayer of Goliath to 
the aged, mature prophet and saint. 

So too, consider the early history of Puritanism in England and 
of Methodism in this country. A severe, abstract logical church- 
man, standing by their cradle whilst still infants, would have 
strangled both of them, if he could have done so, as not fit to 
live ; but looking at them now as they have put on their beauti- 

(701) 



702 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

ful garments and unfolded the real life that was in them, the same 
churchman would be quite thankful that he did not get a chance to 
commit such infanticides. — It was under this progressional view of 
the case that Dr. Nevin regarded his life from the start, and as such 
we here give it in part at the stadium which it reached in his sixt} 7 - 
seventh }-ear. It is largely theological, but in reality intensely re- 
ligious, because with him theology and philosophy were altogether 
secondary, valuable only as they served to promote the true life of 
God in the soul. 

He starts out in his Self-criticism with the question, whether he 
had made any theological progress over against previous imperfec- 
tion that had characterized his earlier life, and then proceeds to 
show in what direction he had moved forward and upwards. " It 
was a matter of course," he sa} 7 s, "that any movement with me 
should start from within the sphere of exegetical and biblical stud} 7 . 
That was the department to which I had been providentially de- 
termined at Princeton ; and that was the department to which I had 
also been called at Allegheny. It fell in with my taste; my attain- 
ments in it were already respectable; and altogether I felt myself 
more at home here than in any other sphere of theological learning. 

"As this had to do directly with the Bible, the acknowledged foun- 
tain, the only sure repository of all revealed truth, my best religious 
feelings were also strongly enlisted in its favor. What could be 
more directly or fully in the line of true Christian science or work 
than the study of the Holy Scriptures, the interpretation of the 
Divine oracles, which are able to make men wise unto everlasting 
life, and by which only the Church can be effect ually guarded from 
error and fitted to fulfil her mission in the world ? Whatever of 
question there may be with regard to other studies, it seemed to 
me at once very plain that there could be none with regard to the 
prime necessity and importance of biblical studies properly so 
called , without which it must be in vain to think of reaching the 
knowledge of religion in an} 7 other form. 

" Looking at the matter in this wa} T , I was disposed to make the 
most of my department, and even to magnif} 7 it somewhat at the 
expense of other provinces of theological learning, as feeling them 
to be without it of only secondary account. I took but small in- 
terest in historical theologj 7 ; and but little more in dogmatic the- 
ology, as handled in the service of confessions and schools. What 
could such outward systematization of doctrines amount to in com- 
parison with the inspired teachings of God Himself? In the end 
there could be but one sort of theology worth} T of the name; and 



Chap. LI] • self-criticism Y03 

that, in the nature of the case, must be biblical theology, or the- 
ology based upon the Bible, and drawn forth from it by fair and 
full interpretation, without regard to any other authority. 

" My first acquaintances with German literature fell in with this 
turn of thought, and served to give it encouragement and support; 
since it lay almost entirely in the sphere of such studies as had to 
do, directly or indirectly, with the interpretation of the Scriptures. 
My introduction to German learning in this form indeed began at 
Princeton by means of English translations partly, and still more 
largely through works written in Latin. The influence of Professor 
Moses Stuart, the pioneer of this kind of learning in the United 
States, made itself felt upon me here with great weight. He was 
in his day the founder of a school, which for a time guided and 
controlled in its own way the general thinking of the country. My 
position in the Western Seminary led me to follow out my studies 
in the same direction as before ; and that I might be able to do so 
with greater advantage, I now made it an object — which I had not 
clone before — to acquire some knowledge of the German language. 
This widened my range of reading, while it continued to be never- 
theless of the same reigning character. My business was oriental 
and biblical literature, and I took an interest mainly in what fell 
within the scope of that department. 

" The German literature, however, with which I was thus brought 
into close contact and connection, was not by any means of a safe 
or altogether wholesome order. It was indeed itself professedly of 
two sorts, one openly rationalistic in the old so-called vulgar style; 
and the other relatively orthodox — that is, more or less faithful in 
asserting the supernatural character of Christianity over against 
the bald infidelity of the opposite side. And so it was an easy 
thing, of course, in these circumstances, for our traditional Amer- 
ican orthodox}- at Andover, Princeton, or elsewhere, without going 
at all into the depths of the matter, to fall in heartily with what 
was considered the better German tendency here against the worse; 
and in doing so, it seemed safe among its adherents, likewise, to 
make free use also of the critical and philological learning of the 
professed rationalists themselves, as fair Egyptian plunder for the 
use and service of God's sanctuary. But it has come since to be 
well understood, that the two parties, thus apparently opposed to 
each other at this time, were divided after all, so far as theological 
principle was concerned, more altogether in form than in fact. 

" The rationalistic element, which ruled the universal thinking of 
the last century, entered still as a conditioning factor into both 



704 . AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 • [DlV. XI 

sides of the division, which as such assumed a very unsteady, fluc- 
tuating character in all directions. The difference consisted in 
that which exists between gross rationalism rather than that be- 
tween proper infidelity and a full faith. Pure rationalism in the 
abstract reigned in one direction, while in the other, what has been 
denominated pure abstract supernaturalism : or in other words, the 
thought of the Divine, held apart from all real union with the world's 
actual life. Substantially it was the old antithesis of the Gnostic 
and Ebionitic forms of thought — polar opposites of the same false 
dualism which rises into view through all the ages of the Church 
as the great fundamental heresy, against which we are so solemn^ 
called to stand by the Apostle, when he says : Ever} T spirit that con- 
fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every 
spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not 
of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard 
that it should come ; and even now is it in the world. 1 John 4 : 1-3. 

"It is not to be disguised," Dr. Nevin goes on to affirm, "that 
on the first introduction of German theological learning into this 
country, it gained credit and made itself felt chiefly under the char- 
acter here described. It did all this, I imvv add, without doing any 
violence to the previous order of religious thought. For this also 
in its own way — pietistic subjectivity — was already largely at fault 
in the same wrong direction. In the end the case, therefore, easily 
came to a friendly correspondence, and to a more or less full coali- 
tion between our Puritanic evangelical orthodoxy and the imported 
rationalistic supernaturalism of Germairv, as it has been styled, the 
fruits of which are wiclety evident all over the country. For the 
infection has not kept itself to any one portion of our religious 
world, but has entered, more or less, into all denominations, show- 
ing themselves here to be of one mind and spirit. 

" Andover," as Dr. Nevin saj-s, "led the way in this course of a 
one-sided development. The earlier translations of German works, 
made at that centre of thought, in the service of biblical literature, 
even where they take ground against rationalism and neolog}', 
breathe, more or less, of the rationalistic spirit. The same may 
be said even of Professor Stuart's Commentary on the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, which made a sensation in its day , and was regarded 
as a bold effort b} T himself and others when it came out. As he 
takes special pains here and there to propitiate the spirit of the 
reigning orthodox}-, it looks very much as if he was not quite 
calmly sure of his own ground." 

Its questionable character did not come out in particular free- 



Chap. LI] self-critictSxM 705 

dom of interpretation or criticisms merely, but manifested itself 
rather in the general animus which pervades it throughout, and in 
the exegetical and theological theory, which underlies its exposi- 
tions from the beginning to the end. But Andover did not stand 
alone in these orthodox evangelical attempts to get the better of 
neologic rationalism on its own territory; neither was the problem- 
atical strategy confined to New England. It appeared at Princeton 
also, and pretty generally in existing Theological Seminaries. 
Methodists and Baptists had naturally gone into it, and even more 
freely perhaps than Congregationalists or Presbyterians. 

"It is in this wa3 T ," Dr. Nevin sa} T s, "that Knapp answers this 
question in opposition to rationalism and in favor of supernatural- 
ism ; but this is done in such a way as to make reason after all, in 
its own natural form, the only medium of assurance for us, in the 
first place, that the Bible is of divine authority ; and then in the 
second place, the only instrument as he calls it, whereby we are to 
arrive at the knowledge of what the Bible reveals. This is simply 
the so-named ' rationalistic supernaturalism,' which has had so little 
power in German}^ to stand before the onward march of rational- 
ism, for the reason that it was reallv, although unconsciously, one 
with it in its fundamental principle, proper character and form. It 
is quite evident that all evidence in favor of the truth of the Scrip- 
tures, which is drawn from personal experience of their salutary 
power, can be nothing more than an element at best entering into 
the general inquest, by which reason in the end is to settle the 
question of their divine infallibility. It comes in no sense what- 
ever to that Testimonium Spiritds Sancti, the ' witness of true knowl- 
edge.' It is not by the outward that we see the inward; only by 
the inward can we understand the outward. That requires more 
than the Ernestian grammatico-historical interpretation ; more than 
' flesh and blood ' can reveal or teach in any way. The supernatural 
object, which in its ultimate fulness is the Word Incarnate, Christ 
Himself, must itself shine into the eye of our spiritual intelligence : 
else all will be dark. 

" The movement in myself of which I now speak might be said 
to have tended, through a whole decade of years at the Allegheny 
Seminary, towards the right realization of this great Christological 
truth. It had for its scope throughout, it seems to me, a proper 
apprehension of the material objective side of the Christian faith, 
regarded as the principle and ground-power of all true evangelical 
religion. This, indeed, I take to be the key of my whole subse- 
quent spiritual and theological history. 



706 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

" So much Having been explained then, the way is now open to 
bring into view briefly some of the different elements and tenden- 
cies, partly theoretical and partly practical, which by their flowing 
together went unitedly to form in me one stream, whereby I was 
carried more and more in this auspicious direction." 

It will not be necessary to quote Dr. Nevin's language to show 
what progress he made in historical and dogmatical theology, as 
the reader has learned that already in these pages. It will be suffi- 
cient, therefore, simply to give his statements in regard to his growth 
in exegetical and practical theolog3 T , which are here given in full in 
two articles. The former he denominates his " Hermeneutical 
Enlargement," and the latter he includes under the title of " Pia 
Desideria." The}' exhibit much of the candor and Christian sim- 
plicity which give such a charm to the Confessions and Retractions 
of the old Church Father, St. Augustine : 

The character of my personal religion, as it has now been de- 
scribed, wrought, with other influences, to free my mind from the 
authority of the Ernestian theory of biblical interpretation, and to 
lead me into a deeper and better view of the Hoi}' Scriptures; and 
this also deserves to be noted then, in the second place, as another 
favorable auspice and influence, brought to bear on the course of 
nrv general theological life. I had in truth never been altogether 
satisfied with Ernesti's method of construing the sacred writings, as 
if they were simply human writings concerned with common human 
things. I had been accustomed from my childhood to the recog- 
nition of something more in them than what la}- merely in the out- 
ward letter; something that was for inward spiritual discernment, 
rather than for common logical apprehension onl}\ Mystical 
senses, and double senses, appeared to me here natural enough and 
all in good place. It was not easy, therefore, to acquiesce in a 
scheme, which left no room for this, but insisted on reducing the 
sense of scripture everywhere to the one bare first verbal significa- 
tion of the text, determined on philological and outwardly his- 
torical grounds. The maxims of Ernesti and Professor Stuart, 
on this subject, were held by me all along to be of somewhat ques- 
tionable authority, notwithstanding their plausible show of com- 
mon sense. For a time, however, they were accepted, as on the 
whole sound, with only slight hesitation and reserve. But grad- 
ually this distrust grew into decided opposition. I found it 
necessary to qualify, and in part to contradict, the teachings of 
my hermeneutical text-book; and in the end the whole S}^stem of 



Chap. LI] hermeneutical enlargement 707 

mere grammatico-historical interpretation lost its credit with me 
altogether. 

I saw that the system in fact overthrows itself, by not carrying 
ont its own principle to its proper end. All human language, it 
tells us, must he interpreted according to its grammatical or literal 
sense; and what that is in any case is a purely historical question, 
a question of outward reality and fact, to be determined by purely 
historical evidence. All turns on the usus loquendi, the established 
sense of words and phrases among those using the language at a 
given time. Settle that in any case, and your exegetical work is 
done; you have the proper literal meaning of the text in hand, 
whatever it ma} T be, and have no right to admit any other meaning. 
But the historical sense of speech, it can easily be shown, is some- 
thing much more than the general current meaning of the words of 
which it is composed, as we find them in the grammar and dic- 
tionary. It draws its main element always from the life and spirit 
which enter into the use of it in any given case ; and this is some- 
thing which no mere grammar or dictionary can ever adequately 
represent. So much is allowed by the system here in question it- 
self, when it lays down the rule that every writer is to be inter- 
preted from his own human stand-point; for that involves all the 
peculiarities of his particular genius and culture, as well as the cir- 
cumstances and conditions of his general outward life. Moses is 
not to be interpreted as David ; nor Isaiah as Jeremiah ; nor St. 
Paul as either St. Peter or St. John. 

But while the system allows this in regard to the simply human 
stand-point of the sacred writers, it fails to recognize the necessity 
of taking into account in the same way their divine stand-point, the 
peculiarity of their position as the subjects of a heavenly inspira- 
tion, occupied and possessed with the full sense of supernatural and 
eternal things. And yet if their inspiration was real, and not im- 
aginary only, it is plain that the posture of mind involved in it, 
the views and feelings belonging to it, must be considered a part of 
the historical signification of what they spake and wrote, full as 
much, to say the least, as anything appertaining to their simply 
natural existence. In this view then, to ignore the supernatural 
element in which Isaiah or St. Paul stood and had their inward 
being, must be regarded as a more serious deviation from the law 
of sound grammatico-historical exegesis itself, than it would be to 
forget even the Jewish nationality of either of them, or the time in 
which he lived, or his particular order of mind. But just here the 
Ernestian scheme breaks down, and ceases to be consistent with 



708 AT LANCASTER EROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

itself. It admits the fact of a supernatural element in revelation ; 
and 3 T et will have it, that this is something which ma}' be reached 
through the medium of human thought and speech taken in their 
merely natural form. In this wa} T it wrongs its own principle, and 
destroj^s itself. 

The fallacy lies in the old perverse mistake by which revelation 
is held to be a mere announcement of theoretical and doctrinal 
truth, made to the ordinary intelligence of the world in a super- 
natural waj T . Any such announcement, it is said, must be through 
the medium of human thought and speech, as already at hand and 
available for the purpose in the common natural life of men, outside 
of the new truth which is thus made known. Else, how could this 
be said to be revealed at all ? Only what is communicated to men 
through their previously existing forms of thought and language, 
it is assumed, can be for them a revelation, a making known of the 
otherwise unknown. 

In this way a distinction is made between the human and the 
divine as jointly concerned in the mystery of revelation, of such 
sort that the human is taken to be entirety on the outside of the 
divine, and is viewed as a vehicle or medium simply through which 
the knowledge of this is conveyed into our minds. The text of the 
Bible thus is everywhere sundered from the actual substance of 
what it reveals; being to this an outward index only, which can be 
so far well enough understood without the help of that toward 
which it points. What there may be of supernatural mysteiy in the 
case comes afterwards, and it is not in an} r wa}' in the text itself; 
that may involve difficulty; but still it is for human apprehension 
(else it would be no revealing or disclosing of truth for men), and 
human science, therefore, may surmount the difficult}' so as to reach 
the sense of the text, and to understand at least what it declares or 
affirms. Then onty, it is supposed, do we touch with our thinking 
the supernatural; and this, it is allowed, m.ny indeed be for us an 
incomprehensible nrystery, which we are required to accept with 
faith on the authority simply of what has been already otherwise 
accredited to our reason as the word of God, telling us that it is 
true. There first, the more-than-human of what is brought near 
to us in the Scriptures, it is imagined, properly begins. We have 
it in the doctrine propounded and set forth in the inspired text. 
This is that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and which it 
hath not entered into the heart of mere man to conceive; that 
which God hath revealed to us by His Spirit, first in the letter 
of the Bible outwardly, and which only His Spirit then working 



Chap. LI] hermeneuttcal enlargement 709 

in us inwardly can cause us to discern in its true spiritual signifi- 
cation. 

And so it is that we have in truth two revelations; one in the 
outward God-spoken text of the Bible, properly authenticated by 
outward evidence for the natural man; and then another in the 
hidden interior sense of this outward communication made accessi- 
ble to the spiritual man through the Spirit, whereby only we can 
"know the things that are freely given to us of God." Both these 
modes of supernatural instruction, the external information and the 
inward illumination, must go together in all true theological sense; 
"the literal sense of Scripture ascertained by grammatical and his- 
torical interpretation, and the hidden meaning of the sacred hiero- 
glyphics unlocked by a believing experience of the things signified." 
They must go together, as factors toward a common result. But 
still they are in no sense properly one in the other. They stand 
apart, and are outside of one another altogether. 

All this corresponds exactly with that abstract view of inspira- 
tion I have had occasion to speak of before, according to which 
there is no union realty in the process between its divine and human 
sides, but all resolves itself into the action of God's Spirit moving 
and working the human spirit in a purely mechanical way. That 
being assumed, there can be no real union anywhere between the 
human form of such a revelation and its divine substance-matter. 
The text of Scripture, as such, can be only the outward vehicle of 
the inward sense of Scripture, each extrinsical in full to the other; 
just what is practically taken for granted in fact by the Ernestian 
hermeneutics throughout. 

But there is no room really to conceive of any such designation 
as this between the outward and the inward in God's spoken or 
written revelation. Plausible as any notion of that sort may appear 
at first view, it becomes, nevertheless, a transparent fallacy, just as 
soon as we come to consider the necessary connection there is uni- 
versally between language and thought, the word processional 
and the in-forming word from which this proceeds. Their relation 
is never simply external and mechanical. They are joined together, 
as intimately as soul and body are so joined in the constitution of 
one and the same human person. It is a solecism, therefore, of the 
most monstrous sort, to talk of the interpretation of language in 
any case apart from the animating spirit to which it owes its being. 
We might as well pretend to see in the eye of a dead corpse the in- 
telligence of a living man. What the e}^e is for the soul behind it, 
language is for its own proper sense and meaning; namely, not the 



710 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

algebraic sign of this only, but the very form in which it is en- 
shrined, and through which it looks out upon us with its own living 
presence. All language has thus its own distinctive life, through 
the apprehension of which only then can it ever be rightbv under- 
stood or rightly explained. There is a spiritual element in this 
way belonging everywhere to the outward element of speech ; which 
is just as much a part of it as the outward words themselves of 
which it is composed ; and without it, we cannot be said to reach 
in any way whatever what it actually means. Logical, grammatical, 
or historical interpretation carried forward without regard to this, 
ceases to be that which it pretends to be ; and is no better than if 
one should undertake to interpret life by mere anatomical dissec- 
tion. So we feel and judge instinctively in our ordinary human 
existence. It is onlj- the soul of words — the soul they have in them 
objectively before they reach our minds — which is regarded as the 
true key to their meaning; and where that has not come to make 
itself felt, there can be neither power nor right, it is well under- 
stood, to sit in judgment on this meaning in any way. 

One of the simplest and most obvious exemplifications of this 
we have in the creations of poetry; which, like the creations of art 
universally, can never be intelligible except to what is called a true 
poetic taste. ~No philological or historical learning can reveal the 
sense of Homer or Horace, Shakespeare or Goethe, without this. 
Only so far as the inspiration of the poet brings his readers into 
felt communication with the higher element of his own life, by 
spiritual union, and they also become poets with it in their second- 
ary degree and measure — only so far, and no farther can its lan- 
guage be said to have entered into their minds in its true historical 
sense. Dr. Channing in this view puts the question pertinently, in 
one of his Essays: How could Johnson be just to Milton? and 
goes on to show how utterly incapable the great lexicographer was 
of understanding the great poet. Whole volumes of learned criti- 
cisms have been written and published on Shakespeare's Plays, in 
which the blindness of what we may denominate aesthetic rational- 
ism shows itself pitiably in the same way. Only the spirit of 
poetry, the same mind which was in the composing poet himself, 
can be safely trusted with the task of expounding the sense of his 
composition. 

And why now must not the same law hold good, analogically, 
with the far higher inspirations of thought and life that enter into 
the composition of the Bible ? Or just because these are fully super- 
natural inspirations, the direct breathings of the Holy Ghost into 



Chap. LI] hermeneutical enlargement 711 

the human spirit, shall it be said that, therefore, the general law of 
human speech and word cannot hold in regard to them, making it 
necessary that they should be inwardly one in any way with the 
speech that gives them utterance? This is the theory of rational- 
istic supernaturalism, applied to the idea of inspiration. The divine 
soul of the inspired word in no living union with its human body, 
as soul and body meet together everywhere else in the constitution 
of man's speech ! Look it squarely in the face, and the imagination 
is worse than preposterous ; it is absolutely monstrous. It is sheer 
Gnosticism. It turns revelation into phantasmagoria and magic. 
Revelation, it is rightly said by this school, must make itself known 
through the medium of ordinary human language, amenable as such 
to the ordinary rules of grammatical and logical interpretation ; 
otherwise, we are told, it would be no revelation or making known 
of the previously unknown. 

This, however, is so taken as to mean only that the human in the 
case must come in as an outside medium simply through which 
access may be had to the divine in its own altogether different 
order of existence. But who may not see that this would be itself 
no bringing of the divine actually into the human sphere, no reve- 
lation, therefore, in any true sense of the term. Revelation can be 
human, only as it shows the divine as such in the form of a real 
human manifestation; never, certainty, by thrusting the divine 
away from the human, and playing off this last upon us as its mere 
docetic simulacrum. As in every other case, it is only the embodi- 
ment of spirit in word that makes this to be real speech for man, 
and not the mockery of it alone, so here also the mind of God must 
actually lodge itself in God's word, if this is to be a real speaking of 
God to men in their own tongue; and then it follows at once that 
what God thus speaks, by heavenly inspiration, cannot possibly be 
understood and explained apart from the supernatural spiritual 
element, which is in this way part of its very being. The divine 
element and the human element meet together in the constitution 
of what is spoken, and they must be apprehended, therefore, each 
in the other to make it intelligible. 

In this view, it is that there is room to speak of such living super- 
natural qualities belonging to God's word, as we find attributed to 
it in the Bible — qualities that are represented as resident in it in- 
trinsically, and not just joined with it through our thinking. So 
in the Old Testament there is ascribed to it a creative, vivific, 
illuminating and purifying force. As the rain from heaven, water- 
ing the earth, causes it to bud and bring forth seed, so God's word, 



712 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

going forth out of His mouth, is not void of answerable power (we 
are told, Is. lv. 10, 11), but has in itself efficacy for the end or 
purpose whereunto it is sent. And more striking still are the terms 
applied to it in the New Testament. In the parable of the Sower, 
the seed is the word of God; which has in itself, objectively, its 
own vegetative potency and life, independently of the nature of the 
soil on which it is sown. St. Peter, accordingly, makes it the very 
principle of regeneration ; declaring, in so many words, that Chris- 
tians are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, 
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." What St. 
Paul says to the Thessalonians is of like sense, when he commends 
them for receiving the word of God in its true Divine character, 
and adds, "which effectually worketh also in j t ou that believe." 
We need not stumble then at what is said, Heb. iv. 12, where we 
are told : " The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than 
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul 
and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the heart." It is this in human form; but 
onh' because in such form, it is more than any simply human word, 
and has in it truly a Divine qualit}' of one nature with the source 
from which it springs. 

That is the matter of revelation, the proper substance of it, 
through the apprehension of which only the human form of it can 
ever be apprehended in its true and right sense. Such apprehen- 
sion, it is at once clear, cannot be b,y mere natural sense or under- 
standing. But there is in man an original capacity for perceiving 
the Divine, an organ for the apprehension of the supernatural, 
when it is brought near to him in such objective form. Awakened 
into exercise, this power is what we call faith. Between faith and 
the supernatural element of God's word there is an original, neces- 
sary correlation ; whereby each is for the other, just as light and 
the eye that sees it are for one another in the world of nature. 
Truth is for the objective side of revelation — the mind of the Divine 
Spirit in it — exactly what the power of the Phantasj- is for the ob- 
jective sense of true poetiy or any other creation of art. It does 
not produce the object; does not put it into the word; the object 
is there waiting for it (like the Beautiful in art) as what is not to 
be otherwise known or seen; and the word, formally considered, is 
what it is in truth, the word of God, and not of man, only through 
the proper celestial matter of it making itself evident in this way 
to faith. How vain then to dream of an} T right interpretation of 
the Scriptures in their human character, without the power of this 



Chap. LI] hermeneutical enlargement 713 

higher vision penetrating into the mystery of their Divine char- 
acter ! 

This is the order of thinking in which Luther so much abounds : 
the Bible the principle of Protestantism; but only the sense of the 
Holy Ghost in the Bible ; and that again only as demonstrated to 
be actually there by the responsive apprehension of Faith. These 
three together, the Bible in the element of the Divine Spirit, and 
Faith having its existence and exercise in the same element ! So 
only could there be any sense in the Protestant principle. The 
Bible, thrown open to private judgment in any other way, must 
become the sport forever of infidel rationalism in one direction and 
of wild fanaticism in another. 

The object, let it be added, which faith seeks and finds in all rev- 
elation, and without which it cannot be faith (as there can be no 
vision without something seen), is throughout in substance the 
same; only in different measures of self-manifesting reality and 
glor}^; a progressive shining in the dark mortal place where we are 
(2 Pet. i. 19), which looks on continually toward the dawning of 
the day and the full rising of the Daj^star, Jesus Christ, in our 
hearts. Here only the older word of God, ' : spoken at sundry times 
and in divers manners by the prophets " (Heb. i. 1,2), comes to the 
complete sense toward which it had been reaching from the begin- 
ning, in the Person of the Word Incarnate ; and nothing short of 
this is the goal, which faith looks to, through all stages of revela- 
tion going before, and where only it can find its full ultimate satis- 
faction and rest. 

How far exactly this Christological way of looking at faith in its 
relation to the Bible had come to prevail with me before I left 
Pittsburgh, I do not now pretend to say. I only know that there 
was in my experience there, a growing tendency to views of biblical 
interpretation which lay in that direction. Herder's Spirit of 
Hebrew Poetry, and Lowth's Lectures on the same subject, were 
not without their effect here on my mind, as showing indirectly and 
analogically the need of a spiritual understanding to comprehend ' 
the utterances of God's Spirit. Even the cold-blooded Michaelis, . 
in his Preface to Lowth's Lectures, insists on the necessity of a 
poetical spirit to understand the inspiration of a poet. How much 
more then must it not require an opened sense for the theanthropic, 
to understand the oracles of the Holy Ghost; according to that 
word to the Jews by Christ Himself: "He that is of God heareth 
God's words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of 
God." Such passages, abounding especially in St. John, took deep , 
45 



714 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

and powerful possession of my mind. Different religious studies con- 
tributed also to bend it more and more the same general way. In 
particular, iny acquaintance in this stage of my life with Tholuck 
and Olshausen was salutary for me and fruitful in no common 
degree. 

I have applied to the system of religious thought in which I 
stood prevailingly, in the period of my life now under retrospect- 
ive judgment, the expressive designation "rationalistic supernat- 
uralism." The term, it is hardly necessary to say, is not one of 
my own invention. It has its well known application in Germany 
to a certain order of Christian life and theology there, the consti- 
tution and historical meaning of which are just as well settled and 
understood, as the nature of orthodoxy or rationalism under any 
other view. Any one may see this, who will look into Dorner's 
Histoiy of Protestant Theology, where the mode of thought in 
question is clearly accounted for and defined. The only difficulty 
in the case is to recognize the presence of the same mode of thought 
as something which is largely at hand also in our English and 
American theology ; but here, of course, in practical more than in 
properly theoretical form. I have tried to show, that the German 
school which undertook to do battle here with rationalism, and 
suffered defeat in doing so, fairly represented, in all material re- 
spects, what was in the first part of the present century the reign- 
ing character of evangelical orthodoxy in this country; and there 
is no doubt but that the case remains much the same still. Such a 
charge does not imply any imputation of religious dishonesty to 
the mode of thought against which it is preferred. 

The rationalistic supernaturalism of Germany, in the latter part 
of the last century, was in its time highly respectable. The task 
it took upon itself in behalf of the Christian faith was an earnest 
exigency of the age, met by it in the spirit of earnest and honest 
zeal. The task seemed to be nothing less, in truth, than to defend 
the last pass against a power, which threatened the ruin of the old 
faith altogether ; and in its own way, the defence was maintained 
with a sort of tragic Spartan bravery, which the world is still 
bound to applaud and respect. 

And just as little certainly have we any reason to call in ques- 
tion the right intention and aim of such rationalistic supernatural- 
ism here in our own country, where it has come as yet so little into 
the light of clear thought. There has been among us all along, 
and there is with us now also, no doubt, a large amount of true 



Chap. LI] pia deslderia *715 

faith in Christianity, held in bondage, as it were, of this system, 
without knowing it and without meaning at all to be under its 
power. To call such supernaturalism rationalistic ought not, there- 
fore, to be taken as an offence; as if it must mean that the s} r stem 
precludes at once the possibility of any real faith. Of course, it is 
not conscious or open rationalism as such that is intended in the 
designation ; on the contrary, it is supernaturalism, or substantially 
orthodox belief, that is intended; but this under a particular view; 
namely, as being so circumstanced that, without knowing or mean- 
ing anything of the sort, it is found to have in itself an element 
which is just the contradictory of itself, and which as such can 
tend only to its own destruction. 

As there was much essentially sound Trinitarian faith impli- 
cated in Arian or Sabellian modes of thought before the Council 
of Nice ; and as there was much essentially sound faith also in the 
article of free grace, implicated in the antagonizing theory of the 
Roman Catholic Church before the days of Luther and Calvin ; so 
there need be no difficulty in allowing the existence of a true belief 
in the supernatural, similarly implicated in views of revelation that 
are in their own nature rationalistic, and in principle opposed to 
faith. There is, therefore, no good reason for resenting the use of a 
term in such case as descriptive of a general system of thought, mere- 
ly because it may set forth what is not consciously intended by the 
system. The question is not what is consciously intended by it, 
but what is involved in it unconsciously — what is the logical se- 
quence of its premises. So we speak (not necessarily with invid- 
ious, railing sense) of a Judaizing Christianity or a Romanizing 
Protestantism ; and so we may speak also of a Gnostic or Ebionitic 
Evangelicalism, or of a Rationalistic Supernaturalism ; not just for 
the purpose of calling hard names, but because such qualifying 
terms answer really and truly to the character of what we have in 
our mind, and because it is not possible to describe it or speak of 
it intelligibly in any other way. 

Thus much I think it proper to say here on this point, not simply 
in the way of general apology to others, but in order also that I 
may not seem to do wrong to myself, in what I speak of as the ra- 
tionalistic character of the theological system in which I stood at 
the time now under consideration. This does not mean, in the 
least, that there was any want or weakness of belief with me in the 
Divine origin of Christianity, or that I had any sympathy whatever 
with the aims and purposes of neological skepticism in any form. 
I held the vulgar or gross rationalism of Germany in abhorrence 



716 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

and contempt. The ordinary objections of infidelity to the fact of 
revelation have never, indeed, given me any very serious trouble. 
Not because I could not see the force of them, nor because I have 
been able always to answer them satisfactorily; but because I have 
alwaj T s had the feeling at least, if not the clear thought, that the 
evidence of Christianity lay somehow in the constitution of Chris- 
tianity itself, and was there in a form which all these difficulties for 
the understanding had no power to reach or touch. 

But this was an anchoring of my faith in fact in the substantive 
matter of revelation itself, and not in the form simply in which 
this came before me in the Bible ; and the ground thus into which 
it struck all along (as far as it was faith), lay far below the plane 
of all I was occupied with in my simply grammatico-historical 
studies ; far below all the biblical theologizings of the Storr and 
Flatt order, based on the mere outward text of the Bible, as though 
that could be in and of itself the matter -principle , no less than the 
form-principle, of heaven-descended truth. In the bosom of this 
general order of thought, as already shown, I had what I may call 
my outward theological standing. But it was not to it I owed the 
Christian faith wherein I stood, however this might seem to be im- 
plicated in what was thus a foreign S3 r stem. In its own nature this 
sj'stem was rationalistic, though honestly meaning to be supra-nat- 
uralistic. The true Christian faith that was in me, therefore, 
wrought not from it nor by it, but was a power looking and strug- 
gling always towards its own proper end in another direction ; and 
in this view it holds in truth the first place in that confluence of 
forces which I have undertaken here to speak of, as having served 
to bring me forth in the end from the slough of a false spiritualism 
into the "more excellent way" of the Gospel in its right Christo- 
logical character and form. 

I have said of my personal religion before, that it was of a sort 
to fall in readily with the crypto-rationalistic mode of thinking 
which prevailed at first, without nry being aware of it, in my bibli- 
cal studies. The relation in the case was just that general affinit}^ 
between pietism and rationalism, which we find illustrated on a 
broad scale by the history of the Spenerian movement in Germany, 
and by that of the Wesleyan movement in England, as well as of 
the Great Awakening in this country during the last century. The 
mind which is in pietism is indeed very different from the mind 
that is in rationalism ; but there is in both the same element of a 
wrong one-sided subjectivity, which serves to place them both in 
the same posture with regard to revelation, and makes it the easiest 



Chap. LI] pia desiderta 111 

thing in the world for that which begins as the inward life in the 
first form to end as the inward life in the second form. The con- 
nection between George Fox and Elias Hicks is alwaj^s exceedingly 
close, and involves in it no mystery whatever. Semler sprang not 
unnaturally, but by legitimate derivation, from the school of Halle. 
Now my own personal piety, as already shown, was strongly sub- 
jective from the beginning. It was of the spiritualistic, experi- 
mental order, making much of inward frames and states. 

I do not speak of it in this way certainly to disparage it, as if I 
considered what is called experimental religion to be of little or no 
account: Unquestionably religion must be a matter of personal ex- 
perience, and should engage the heart profoundly no less than the 
understanding. The soul-exercises of such godly men as Spener and 
A. H. Francke, Bengel and Zinzendorf in Germany, the Wesleys, 
Whitefield, and others of like spirit in England and in this coun- 
try, belong to the inmost life of Christianity; and not to be in 
some sort of sympathy with them must ever be taken as the mark 
of a more or less irreligious mind. Pietism in such form has al- 
ways commanded my regard, and will continue to do so always, I 
trust, to the end. But with all this, my religion in this form had 
in it, what I may call an open side toward rationalism, and had 
something to do, therefore, with the wrong view of revelation, 
which, as already explained, made itself felt in my theological 
studies generally at the time now in question. 

Its fault lay not just in its being inward, spiritual, and experi- 
mental ; but in its being so in a defective and one-sided way. Its 
experience did not go deep enough ; its subjectivity reached not 
far enough ; its spirituality was not free enough ; and stood not 
enough in the objective element of the Divine Spirit. That was 
the difficulty. What I wish to say now, however, is that my per- 
sonal religion was only in part implicated in the defect thus de- 
scribed. There was in it all along another mode of experience al- 
together (deeper and more inward), which looked quite another 
way ; and of this it is that I now speak as a force involved in the 
Christian faith itself that was in me, which refused to stop in the 
mere form of revelation, and would be content with nothing short 
of the actual substance of it as its own homogeneal object and 
only satisfying rest. 

This lay to a certain extent in my correspondence and fellowship 
with the practical divinity of the seventeenth century ; which, I 
have already said, never seemed to me to fit in exactly with the 
Methodistical evangelicalism of modern times. The difference was 



T18 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

something I could feel, and it had the effect of making me look on 
this last always with some amount of distrust. My views of evan- 
gelical piety were shaped largely by Such writers as Baxter, Flavel, 
Owen, and Howe ; and the deep Platonizing thoughts of the last 
especially took hold upon my mind with great force. Still more, 
I may sa3 T ,was my soul wrought upon by the profound spirituality 
of the great and good Archbishop Leighton. 

In all this style of experimental religion, there was what seemed 
to me something much deeper than anything I met with, or heard 
of, in the reigning theory of evangelical personal religion belonging 
to the present time. In its own way it unquestionably made far 
more account, than this does, of the objective powers of Chris- 
tianity, as the only ground and guaranty for experience in any 
right form. It had to do with ideas, at least, which were held to 
be of objective force, and not merely subjective notions and fancies. 
Its righteousness of faith stood very distinctly in the believing ap- 
prehension of a real grace meeting the soul from beyond its own 
being, and not in any inward persuasion or feeling simply of the 
soul itself. It made much in particular of religion regarded as a 
new life, and as being, in this respect, something much more than 
doctrine only, or any passing experience. ~No one need to be in- 
formed how this great thought is blended in Howe and Leighton ; 
as it forms also the whole theme of Henry Scougal's admirable 
little volume entitled " Life of God in the Soul of Man," another 
writer with whom I have always felt myself in much unison of 
spirit. 

Shaw's "Immanuel; or, True Religion, a Living Principle in the 
Minds of Men," turns throughout on the same thought; a popular 
practical exposition (belonging also to the seventeenth century) of 
the text : " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in 
him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life." A foun- 
tain derived from Christ, of one order and substance with His own 
life, but as such a perennial principle and spring also of life in the 
believer himself! "Religion," it is -said, "is not so much given of 
God, as itself is something of God in the soul ; as the soul is not 
so properly said to give life, as to be the life of man. As the con- 
junction of the soul with the body is the life of the body, so verily 
the life of the soul stands in its conjunction with God by a spirit- 
ual union of will and affections." Again : " God cloth not so much 
communicate Himself to the soul by way of discovery as by w&y 
of impression ; and indeed not so much by impression neither, as 



Chap. LI] pia desideria 719 

by a mystical and wonderful way of implantation. Religion is not 
so much something from God, as something of God in the minds 
of good men ; for so the Scripture allows us to speak. It is, there- 
fore, called His image, Col. iii. 10, and good men are said to 'live 
according to God in the spirit,' 1 Pet. iv. 6 ; but as if that were not 
high enough, it is not only called His image, but even a participa- 
tion of His divine nature, 2 Pet. i. 4 ; something of Christ in the 
soul ; an infant Christ, as one, calls it, alluding to the Apostle, Gal. 
iv. 19, where the saving knowledge of Christ is called Christ Him- 
self — 'until Christ be formed in you.' True religion is, as it were,. 
God dwelling in the soul, as the Apostles St. John and St. Paul 
express it." 

This manner of looking at religion, by which it is regarded as 
transcending all merely intellectual character, and also all merely 
ethical character, and as being in some way the actual " life of God 
in the soul," runs easily, one may say indeed necessarily, into the 
form of what is commonly understood to be mysticism. We find 
in this view at once a very obvious difference between the two or- 
ders of experimental religion of which I am now speaking. There 
is a mystical element ever3 r where in the older practical divinity, 
which we do not meet with in our modern evangelicism. This is 
characteristically intellective and self-comprehensive in its spiritual 
exercises, even where these are held to be most of a supernatural 
character. Our revival experiences are in this way far more mag- 
ical than mystical. 

Now here again my own religion fell in altogether with the past 
more than with the present. It was constitutionally, I may say, 
of a mystical tendency and turn. Mysticism, we are told, is of 
different kinds; it may be prevailingly intellectual, or prevailingly 
ethical ; it is confined to no one order of religious faith ; it has its 
home largely in the old Catholic Church; and it has entered as a 
powerful factor from the beginning also into the life of the Prot- 
estant Church. It is not necessary to say what exactly it amounted 
to in myself more than this, that there was in me a sense and feel- 
ing of much in Christianity,. which was not to be reached in the 
way of common thought; but needed for its discernment and appre- 
hension a deeper and more vital mode of knowledge. 

It was an echo all the time to St. Paul's word : " We speak the 
wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God 
ordained before the world unto our glor}^. What man knoweth the 
things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him ? Even so 
the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now 



120 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which 
is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely given to 
us of God." It was in particular a pulse-response to the ineffable, 
as it comes before us everywhere in the Gospel of St. John ; a full 
felt sympathy with the mysterious power of this Gospel as de- 
scribed by Claudius : "Twilight and night lit up with swift gleams 
of lightning! a soft evening cloud, and behind it the round full- 
orbed moon ! " Above all, it was a going forth of the soul to meet 
the voice of the heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus Christ Himself; whose 
words, according to His own declaration, are "spirit and life," and 
as such for the inward far more than for the outward ear; whose 
miracles are parables, and whose parables are miracles ; and whose 
whole presence in the world, indeed, is for faith the sacrament of 
the invisible and eternal, in a way transcending all natural intelli- 
gence or thought. 

It is easy to see that experience in this form, or even the reach- 
ing after experience in such form, was something which could never 
fraternize easily and well with the reigning revival system of the 
time, which had come to be considered so generally, among Pres- 
b3'terians now as well as Methodists, the great power of good for 
the salvation of the world. Finnej^sm.as it used to be called, was 
not to my taste ; although I was slow and cautious in my judg- 
ments with regard to its exhibitions ; because I made large account 
in fact of experimental piety, and also of religious awakenings in 
what I conceived to be their proper character. It was not the 
earnestness of this s} T stem that I disliked ; but what seemed to me 
to be too generally the mechanical and superficial character of its 
earnestness. Its professional machinery, its stage-dramatic way, 
its business-like way of doing up religion in whole and short order, 
and then being done with it — all made me feel that it was at best a 
most unreliable mode of carrying forward the work and kingdom 
of God. 

But if the general turn of nrv religion, in the view now described, 
stood in felt dissonance with this sort of Methodistical, theatrical 
revivalism, it ma}- very easily be understood also, how it refused 
no less to be satisfied with what was at this time, as we have seen, 
the reigning order of my biblical and theological studies. It 
wrought in me powerfully, I may say, as a perpetual protest against 
what was felt to be in them an unnatural sundering, in some way, 
between the form of Christian truth and its proper supernatural 
substance. My favorite devotional manual was (as it has be.en 
with millions), the De Imitatione Christi of Thomas a Kempis. 



Chap. LI] pi a desideria 121 

But I need not say how fulty this goes everywhere for the interior 
sense of Scripture in distinction from its exterior sense. 
Thus he expresses himself: 

Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth! 

I am Thy servant ; 
Give me understanding, that I may know Tiry testimonies. 

Incline my heart to the w T ords of Thy mouth ; 

Let Thy speech flow into me as dew. 
The children of Israel said of old to Moses : 

Speak Thou to us, and we will hear; 
But let not the Lord speak to us, lest perchance we die. 

Not so, Lord, not so do I pray, 
But rather with thy Prophet Samuel numbly and earnestly beg : 

Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth! 
Let not Moses speak to me, nor any of the Prophets; 

But speak Thou, Lord God, 

Inspirer and illuminator of all the Prophets :• 
Because Thou alone without them canst instruct me perfectly, 

But they without Thee will profit nothing. 
They can indeed sound forth words, 

But they give not spirit. 

They speak well, 
But if thou are silent, they cannot move the soul. 

They communicate letters, 

But Thou openest the sense. 

Speak, Thou, therefore, Lord, 

For Thy servant heareth; 

Thou hast the words of eternal life. 

Dr. Nevin admired such thoughts, and we give them as expressed 
in the original Latin in which he read them : 

Loquere, Domine, quia audit servus tuus ! 

Servus tuus sum ego; 
Da mihi intellectum, ut sciam testimonia tua. 
Inclina cor meum in verba oris tui ; 
Pluat ut ros eloquium tuum. 
Dicebant olim filii Israel ad Moysen : 
Loquere tu nobis, et audiemus ; 
Non loquatur nobis Dominus, 

Ne forte moriamur. 
Non sic, Domine, non sic oro, 
Sed magis cum Samuele Propheta, 
Humiliter ac desideranter obsecro : 
Loquere, Domine, quia audit servus tuus! 
Non loquatur mihi Moyses, 
Aut aliquis ex Prophetis ; 
Sed tu potius loquere, Domine Deus, 
Inspirator et illuminator omnium Prophetarum : 
Quia tu solus sine eis potes me perfecte imbuere, 



722 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

Illi autem sine te nihil proficient. 
Possunt quid em verba sonare, 
Sed Spiritum non conferunt. 

Pulcherrime dicunt, 
Sed te tacente cor non accendunt. 
Litteras tradunt, sed tn sensnm aperis. 
Hysteria proferunt, 
Sed tn reseras intellectnm signatornm. 
Loqnere igitur, Domine, quia audit servus tuus; 
Verba enim vitse seternse habes. 

Thoughts of this sort often shook my soul, resounding through 
it as the voice of "deep answering unto deep." How poor seemed 
to me then all merely outward modes of mastering the sense of the 
Bible. There were times with me, when looking at the matter in 
this way, that I would have felt it a relief, rather than otherwise, 
to have had half my books at the bottom of the Alleghen}^ river. 

In the year 1873 there was a special meeting of the Synod of the 
Reformed Church at Lancaster, in the month of February, the ob- 
ject of which was to reorganize some of its benevolent operations. 
It so happened that it convened during the week when Dr. Nevin 
had reached his seventieth birth-day. Preparations had been made 
by the Faculties and Students of the different institutions to cele- 
brate the event in some appropriate manner. A valuable gold 
watch had been purchased for this purpose, and in the afternoon 
of his birth-day the members of the Synod, the Faculties and Stu- 
dents went out to Dr. Nevin's house in a body to congratulate him 
and witness the presentation of the gift. The congratulatory ad- 
dress was delivered by Rev. Dr. E. V. Gerhart, the Senior Professor 
in the Seminary, to which Dr. Nevin made the following rejoinder: 

Sir: You will please accept for yourself, and in behalf of those 
whom you here represent, my most sincere thanks for this expres- 
sion of your united kindness, and good will. I need not say that 
it has taken me with entire surprise; and you will understand, 
therefore, that airy utterance of my feelings in response to it can 
be only in an informal and more or less free and conversational way. 

The occasion which has called forth your demonstration could 
not be otherwise, of course, than one of very solemn interest in it- 
self to my own mind. All birth-days in the life of a man have their 
solemnity ; but a special significance in this view attaches itself to 
that, which marks the term of threescore years and ten, around 
which such an interest is thrown by the way in which it is spoken 
of in the Ninetieth Psalm. However surprised I ma}^ have been 



Chap. LI] seventieth birth-day 723 

by your present manner of commemorating it, the epoch itself has 
not come upon me unawares. I have had it before me, not only 
for days but for years, in the light of the Psalmist's words, and in 
view of its ever nearing approach, have tried at least so to number 
my days, as to apply my heart unto wisdom. 

You congratulate me on my having attained to so high an age, 
in the possession of so much vigor and strength. There is indeed 
something wonderful in this to my own mind. For it is altogether 
different from all that I looked for myself, or that my friends gen- 
erally expected in my behalf, when I was a young man. I entered 
upon the study of my profession questioning seriously if I should 
live to enter it, and hardly daring to dream that I might continue 
in it to the age of fifty. When I had gained that age, too, I had 
the general feeling, that my course must be drawing to a close; and 
not long after actually withdrew from public work, much broken 
in mind and body, into a retirement that I considered to be for the 
rest of my days. And yet here I am, at the age now of seventy, in 
full service again; and you are here also, as the organ of our three 
Institutions, and of these brethren of our Synod, to tell me that I 
have not yet become old in the sense of either bodily or spiritual 
decrepitude, and that my bow still abides in strength. In this 
view, I accept thankfully your present congratulations; with a 
gratitude, however, which looks through the occasion, at the same 
time, to our common Heavenly Father, in whom alone are all our 
springs, and by whose power and care only it is, that we are up- 
held in existence for a single day. 

But mere length of days would be of small account, if that were 
all that gave significance to my past life ; and small reason there 
would be in such case for the felicitations you bring me at the 
present time. My satisfaction with the occasion lies far more, in 
my being permitted to look back on my life from the point now 
reached, through the collective judgment of which you are the 
honored spokesman, and to feel that (as you have taken pains to 
say), it has not been spent in vain. In its details it often seemed 
trivial enough (as in the case no doubt with all human lives), and 
like others I have often been forced to exclaim mentally (if not in 
word), looking at myself, " Lord, wherefore has thou made all men 
in vain ! " But from the tower of observation I occupy here to-day, 
' surrounded with this cloud of living witnesses, and taking in at 
one view the whole period of my connection with the German Re- 
formed Church, it would be but a false modesty on my part, and 
something worse, either to call in question its significance or to 
doubt the importance of my own life with regard to it. 



124 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

You have done well, sir, to limit 3 T our retrospect to the time of 
my coming to Mercersburg. I had lived some thirty-seven }^ears 
before that; had done some work; had formed intimacies, and 
passed through experiences, on which I still look with fond recol- 
lection. But that previous time has become for me, alas, like the 
memoiy of a dream or a meditation among the tombs; and for 
those now around me, it is much of course as if it had never existed 
at all. For you and others here my public life and work elate from 
the } T ear 1840, when I accepted the call of the Reformed Church 
and became a Professor in her Theological Seminary at Mercers- 
burg. 

That was indeed an epoch in my history of more than ordinaiy 
interest. You have referred to it under the view of its significance 
for the Church; but it was in truth of no less significance for my- 
self. If I have under God rendered such service as you say to the 
German Reformed Church, in her regeneration of the last thirty 
years, it has been only by going through a regeneration in nyself, 
which is due unquestionably to the fact of my having come into 
her bosom. Before I did so, I had known but little of what she 
was in this county, and still less of her older true historical spirit 
and genius. When I came, however, it was with the purpose to 
identif}^ myself permanently and in full with what the Church was 
in her own proper constitution; and the result was, in ways I need 
not here stop to explain, a providential opening before me of new 
modes of thought, that found response more and more in the 
Church also, so that there has been with us a common movement 
throughout, bringing us to the point where we now are. In all 
this there never was an}^ premeditation or plan. If ever a move- 
ment moved itself, and wrought out the particulars of its own 
course, our so called Mercersburg movement m^j be said to have 
done so from the days of Dr. Ranch down to the present time. 

In coming into the German Reformed Church, I came, not without 
some fear and trembling, as a stranger among strangers. But I was 
welcomed from all sides, and soon made to feel nryself complete^ 
at home. J^ow, however, it is all like a mournful vision of the past. 
Thirty-three 3~ears are the term of a whole human generation; and 
those who first gave me the hand of fellowship in my then new com- 
munion, are, alas, nearly all gone. The middle-aged ministers and 
elders of that day, who showed themselves so true in our earlier 
church conflicts; how their forms rise before me at this time! Can 
it be possible, that I have outlived all these, and that I am among 
3^ou to-day, as one of the few remaining representatives of what 



Chap. LI] seventieth birth-day 125 

the Church was in that older time? It is even so. The fathers, 
where are they? Another generation has come in to take their 
place. Here around me are new forms, risen up to man our insti- 
tutions and to sit in the councils of our Church, They bear upon 
them the signature of mature manhood, tending in some cases to- 
ward old age. But they come around me to-day as, for the most 
part, my pupils; students of Mercersburg, back to the year 1840, 
joining hands with the students of Lancaster down to the present 
time, to do honor to me as their common preceptor, on this my 
seventieth birthday, and to make me feel how much that means 
in the onward progress of a man's life. 

You have spoken of the trials I have had to encounter in my 
work. These have indeed been serious, not only for myself, but 
also for the whole cause with which for years I have been identified. 
From the entire unchurchly wing of Protestantism, now in one de- 
nomination and again in another, we have been subjected to a 
course of persistent misrepresentation and persecution, the like of 
which is not to be met with in the history of any other religious 
body in this county; the very object of it having been, in part at 
least, to excite and promote faction among us, for the purpose of 
doing God service through our ecclesiastical dissolution. It has 
seemed to me a wonder at times, that in our weakness, especially 
during the day of comparatively small things at Mercersburg, we 
were not overwhelmed in fact with just such a catastrophe; the 
blame of which then would have been most assuredly thrown in 
main part upon myself. But through God's great mercy this has 
not happened. On the contrary, our trials have redounded strange- 
ly to our advantage and success ; our cause somehow seeming al- 
ways to gather fresh strength from the attempts that were made to 
crush it to the earth. There is no reason, therefore, why I should 
not at this time look back with satisfaction on these tribulations 
of my life (endured for the sake of truth and righteousness), as 
well as on what you proclaim to have been its triumphs ; since it 
is only through the tribulations in fact, that the triumphs have 
come, as they could not well have come, indeed, in any other way. 

I rejoice to know, in the retrospect of a third of a century, that 
has passed since I came into the German Reformed Church, that 
the Church has been growing all the time, in the wa} r you mention. 
Outside hooting and inside croaking have not been able to arrest 
our progress. Statistical tables show, that the ratio of our numer- 
ical increase has been greater this last ten years, than that of any 
other denomination. But of more account than this has been our 



726 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

moral growth. The single Classis of Mercersburg can do more an- 
nually for Church operations now, than the whole Eastern Synod 
could do in 1840. There has been with us marked progress in re- 
ligious knowledge and intelligent piety. Through great difficulties 
our educational institutions have been steadily gaining ground; 
and we have good prospect now, that our central institutions in 
this place (on which the whole future of the Church so largely de- 
pends), Theological Seminar} 7 , College, and Academy, will, in a 
short time, be on a foundation to secure their existence for all 
coming time. Our alumni are felt in the land. They are favorably 
known in the different professions and in political life. The new 
generation, on whose shoulders the sacred trust of our future has 
now devolved, is showing itself equal to its task, and awake to its 
mission. The last number of the Mercersburg Review was filled 
entirely with articles from our younger men. Through all dis- 
couragements thus the Church has gone forward with inward as 
well as outward growth, and is this da} 7 a power and promise of 
good in the country far bej^ond what it has ever been before. 

All this God has brought to pass through the co-operation of 
different ministries and means ; among which it is matter of rejoicing 
with me to-day, that I have been permitted to bear my part. 

But among all the satisfactions of my life, there is none which 
comes more closely home to me on this occasion, than that which 
it has been my privilege to enjoy in the affectionate confidence and 
trust of my students. This has fallen to my lot beyond the com- 
mon experience of teachers. Since the day I came to Mercersburg 
down to the present time, those who have stood nearest to me in 
this intimate relation, and in that way have known me best, have 
been my warmest and best friends. Some few among the whole 
number, it is true, have become embittered toward me in subse- 
quent life, through unfortunate party interest and feeling ; though 
even these, I trust, entertain for me still a true cordial regard in 
the bottom of their heart. But of my pupils in general, it may be 
said, that their regard for me has been that of sons towards a father. 
I have loved them and they have loved me. Through all persecu- 
tions, their faith in me has remained firm. They have been around 
me as a bulwark and wall of defence. But for their steadfast con- 
stancy and truth, when men rose up against me, I should have 
fallen ecclesiastically long ago without the power to rise. This is 
my glory and reward, as embodied especially in the present occa- 
sion. 

You, sir, head, on this occasion, the long catalogue of my stu- 



Chap. LI] seventieth birth-day 727 

dents, as you have been all along also my honored friend. Around 
you are our colleagues of the Seminary, College, and Academy, 
with their united band of young men and boys, whose souls look 
forth through their open faces, the deep interest they take in what 
is now going forward. And then to crown all, here is this reverend 
synodical attendance made up mostly of older students back to the 
first years of Mercersburg, who to-day feel themselves young again 
in the glad fellowship that surrounds them. Need I say, how much 
this whole presence means in such view? I am, indeed, as a pa- 
triarch to-day in the bosom of my own family. To } t ou who are 
here present, and to the many more whom absent, you represent, I 
may say with St. Paul, the aged, " Ye are my glory and joy;" as I 
commit to you also, for the time to come, my character and good 
name, knowing full well, that 3 t ou will care for them after I am 
dead, as truty, as if they were your own. 

The very handsome present you have tendered me in behalf of 
the students and professors of our three institutions, I accept 
with thanks, in the spirit with which it has been given. I value it 
for its material worth, but still more for its ideal meaning and 
sense, which is something far greater. It will be my pride to wear 
it henceforward as an abiding monument and pledge of the love, 
from which it has sprung. 

May God reward and bless you all abundantly for your great 
kindness! 



CHAPTER LII 

IX the 3 r ear 1867, Dr. Dorner, the celebrated theological professor 
in the University of Berlin, German} 7 , wrote an interesting and 
able article on the Liturgical Controvers} 7 in the Reformed Church 
in the United States, which appeared in the Jahrbucher fur 
deutsche Theologie. His attention was directed to the subject by 
several American students pursuing their studies in the University 
at the time, who, having just come from the midst of the heated 
controversy in America, presented too prominently the pessimistic 
or dark side of this great movement; and Dr. Dorner evidently 
wrote his article in order to promote peace and conciliation. The 
German professor, however, lived, as Dr. Nevin said, at too remote 
a distance from the scene of conflict in America to get a clear in- 
sight into our ecclesiastical relations. His learned article, there- 
fore, instead of silencing the strife only made matters worse. Cer- 
tain parts of it, or expressions, were gathered up and used as artillery 
for a time against the new Liturgy, its theolog} T , and more particu- 
larly against Dr. Nevin himself. It became necessary, therefore, 
for him to stand up in defence of himself and the work here in this 
country with which he had become vitally identified. His Answer 
to Professor Dorner for evident reasons appeared first in the Re- 
formed Church Messenger, and then subsequently in the October 
number of the Mercersburg Review, for 1868, where it occupied one 
hundred and eleven pages. It was preceded by two articles which 
were preliminary to the final Answer in the Review; one on Dor- 
ner's History of Protestant Theology, Pp. Tl ; and one on Our Rela- 
tions to Germany in October, 1867, the latter of which is here 
given without abridgment. 

It has been occasionally charged against our theology heretofore, 
that it consisted very much in a blind following of German modes 
of thought. Because it made large account of German learning, 
and of the results of German speculation in the different depart- 
ments of theological science, it was considered proper to make the 
fact a reason for viewing its peculiarities with suspicion and dis- 
trust. This could be done in different ways to suit occasions. 
Sometimes it had the purpose simply of disparaging our views, as 
being without any sort of original force. Again, it was to hold 

(728) 



Chap. LII] our relations to Germany ^29 

them up to contempt, as unintelligible and obscure; German think- 
ing, at best, being a sort of dreamy idealism, and our version of it 
of course an incompetent rendering into English, that was sure to 
turn it into something worse. What came in such form was of 
questionable shape. It might be set down at once as transcendental 
nonsense ; in so far forth precisely as it failed to fall in with the 
stereotyped notions of those whose perspicacity, thanks to their 
want of all German training, had never become clouded by any 
similar mysticism. 

Then again, however, the charge of Germanizing was pitched 
upon a new key. Could anj^ good thing, in the way of Christianity 
and theologjr, come out of Germany ? Was it not the land of ne- 
ology, rationalism, and pantheism? Had not its philosophy, from. 
Kant to Hegel, been in the service throughout of skepticism and 
unbelief; and was it not notorious that its old religious orthodoxy 
had been swept away completely by the influence of its philo- 
sophical speculations? To be in any communication with German 
thinking, in such circumstances, was counted enough in certain 
quarters to justify the apprehension of a somewhat latitudinarian 
or unsound faith. The idea seemed to be, that a man was the more 
to be relied upon as a competent scholar in philosophical, theolog- 
ical, and moral science, the less he knew of the great writers on 
these subjects in modern Germany. Rauch's Psychology, for ex- 
ample, might have been better without the knowledge of Hegel ; 
it detracted from the value of his Lectures on Ethics, that he had 
studied Eichte and was thoroughly familiar with the teaching of 
Daub; and that Mercersburg theology, as it was called, should find 
anything at all to admire or approve in the magnificent Schleier- 
macher, was held sufficient to bring upon it the reproach of all his 
errors. 

Here, moreover, was ground for looking askant on its professed 
regard for the first class of evangelical German theologians gener- 
ally belonging to the present time. For who among them had not 
been influenced, more or less, by the thinking of Schleiermacher? 
It was no help to our cause then, that it could plead in its favor at 
certain points the authority of such men as Neander, or Ullmann, 
or Julius Miiller, or Dorner, or Rothe, or Ebrard, or Martensen, or 
Liebner, or Tholuck, or Lange. These might be all good enough 
for Germany; but they could not pass muster here, of course, 
among the evangelical sects of America; and any school or ten- 
dency among us, therefore, that might pretend to be in good under- 
standing with them theologically, could but deserve, for this very 
46 



730 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlY. XI 

reason, to be looked upon with some measure of misgiving and 
doubt. 

We have been blamed heretofore, we say, in these different ways, 
for being too much ruled b} 7 the authority of the Germans in matters 
of theolog} 7 and religion ; and man} 7 are no doubt still ready, as 
much as ever, to renew the blame on what they may feel to be suit- 
able occasion. It is somewhat surprising, however, to find this 
charge against us turned of late into precisely the opposite form. 
On the strength of an opinion got at second hand from Dr. Dorner, 
in regard to our new Liturgy, occasion is taken to make it out that 
our views are not endorsed b} 7 the standard-bearers of modern evan- 
gelical theology in German} 7 ; and that this now must be taken as a 
powerful presumption against them without any farther considera- 
tion. If it was our heresy before to be too much German, it is our 
no less serious heterodoxy now to be too little German. The case 
of difference with us, on the part of Dorner, is indeed ludicrously 
small. It reduces itself to a single point, set over against three 
other main points, in which he agrees with us in full, against those 
who wish to overwhelm us with his condemnation. Dorner is in 
favor of a true people's Liturgy; Dorner approves of our seeking 
to incorporate the spirit of the primitive Liturgies with the theo- 
logical life of the sixteenth centuiy ; Dorner declares the sacramental 
doctrine of our Liturgies to be the true doctrine of the Reformed 
Church as it was taught 03- Calvin in the age of the Reformation. 
These are all the great points, on which the Puritanic anti-liturgical 
part} 7 among us, and on the outside of us, has been at issue with us, 
more or less angrily, all along. 

But then, the same Dr. Dorner takes exception, it is said, to our 
view of ordination and the Christian Ministry, pronounces it An- 
glican (not German), and sees involved in it the conception of 
a third sacrament not in proper harmony with Protestantism; 
and this at once is seized upon as sufficient to turn his otherwise 
favorable judgment into a wholesale testimony against us, with 
which, it is complacently assumed, we ought to feel ourselves al- 
together confounded and put to shame. With the Christological 
theology of Dorner, UHman, and other such German divines, the 
Puritanic anti-liturgical part} 7 among us, and on the outside of us, 
have in the nature of the case no sympathy whatever. It is that 
order of thinking precisely which they are ever ready to exclaim 
against as unevangelical, whenever it conies in their way. But in 
the case before us, all that is forgotten. To serve an occasion now, 
these German authorities (though they are themselves mostly not 



Chap. LII] our relations to Germany 131 

Reformed at all, but either Lutheran or Unionistic), are made to 
be an infallible standard for the German Reformed Church here in 
America, which we, as belonging to that Church, are bound to re- 
spect, on pain of being held heretical for any deviation from it 
whatever. The authorities in question, it is well known, are not 
in full harmony among themselves, and agree with no sect or con- 
fession in this country ; but no matter for that ; if the} r can be made 
to tell against our so-called Mercersburg theology in any way, it is 
at any rate so much clear gain. Does not this theology claim 
to be German, as professing to represent the German Reformed 
Church? But here we have the Germans themselves objecting to 
at least something in it, as not according to their mind. Is not 
that enough to condemn it? 

It is hard enough certainly, that we should have charged upon 
us as a fault in this case, what it has been considered our fault at 
other times to be wanting in ; the power, namely, of not following 
blindly in the wake of German theological speculation. But let it 
pass. We are used to such unfair polemics. All we have in mind 
now is the improvement of the occasion here offered, for setting 
forth in general terms briefly what our relations to Germany have 
been actually all along, and still continue to be, in the whole sphere 
of religion and theology. 

We honor German learning and thought, and stand largely in- 
debted to them for such views as we have come to have of man 
and the world, of Christianity and the Bible. We are not of that 
class who pique themselves on being good philosophers, because 
the t y have never read a line of Kant and have not the remotest con- 
ception of what was dreamed of by Fichte and Schelling ; or who 
consider themselves good and safe theologians, because their dog- 
matic slumbers have never been for a moment disturbed by Schleier- 
macher or the dangerous school of Tubingen. We confess our ob- 
ligations both to the philosophers and the theologians of Germany. 
They have done much to deepen our religious convictions, and to 
widen the range of our religious thought. We are perfectly sure 
that the central stream of all spiritual science in the modern life of 
the world is in that country ; and that it is worse than idle, there- 
fore, to dream of any live, progressive thinking, philosophical or 
theological, in England, America, or any other country, which shall 
not be impregnated largely with the results of German study and 
speculation. 

With all this high opinion, however, of the German mind and 
learning, we belong to no German school, and have never pretended 



732 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

to. follow strictly arr^ German system or scheme of thought. 
Neither have we been blind at all, or insensible, to the clangers of 
a too free and trustful communication with these foreign forms of 
thinking. There has been no disposition with us, either to commit 
ourselves passively to any such guidance, or to set up an independ- 
ent sj^stem by its help. We have all along disclaimed everything of 
this sort. Theory and speculation have been with us subordinate 
always to the idea of positive Christianity, as an object of faith ex- 
hibited to us in the Bible and the history of the actual Church. 

The Christological principle has been for us immeasurably more 
than the requirements of any school of philosophy; its practical 
consequences have weighed more with us than the logical necessi- 
ties of an}' metaphysical s} T stem. We have been able to see and 
own thankfully the service which has been rendered to the cause of 
Christianity, through the intonation of this great principle by 
Schleiermacher, and other master-minds who have here followed 
him with far more orthodoxy than he ever had himself, without 
feeling ourselves bound in the least to accept in full all that any 
such master mind may have been led to deduce from the principle as 
belonging to the right construction of Christian doctrine. Our the- 
ology in this view has not been built upon Schleiermacher or TT11- 
mann, or Dorner, however much of obligation it cheerfully owns to 
each of them, as well as to others, whose more or less variant systems 
of thought go together to make up the conception of what is called 
the evangelical theology of Germany in its most modern form. 

Whatever of force and worth the Christological studies of these 
great men carry with them for our thinking, all is felt to rest ulti- 
mately only in their bearing on the actual life of Christ, and the 
relation the} T hold to the development of the mystery of godliness 
in the actual histoiy of the Church. Here we reach what we feel 
to be surer and more solid ground than any such studies of them- 
selves furnish; and just because these studies seem too often to 
stop short of what is involved for faith in the full historical appre- 
hension of the Christian mystery, as a continuous presence in the 
world, they are found to be at certain points more or less unsatis- 
factory in the end to our religious feeling. Here it is that, with 
all our respect for German divinity, we consciously come to a break 
with it in our thoughts, and feel the necessit}' of supplementing it 
with the more practical wa} T of looking at Christianity which we 
find embodied in the ancient Creeds. In this respect, we freely 
admit, our theology is more Anglican than German. We stand 
upon the old Creeds. We believe in the Holy Catholic Church. 



Chap. LII] our relations to Germany 733 

In this way the Church Question, in particular, has come to have 
for us an interest and significance which it has not, and cannot 
have, even for the best thinkers in Germany. With us, the whole 
Christological interest is felt to run into it as its necessary issue 
and end. The Church challenges our faith as an essential part of 
the Christian salvation ; a mystery, to the acknowledgment of 
which we are shut up by the inward movement of the Creed. But 
in Germany, they cannot look, at the matter in the same way. Their 
circumstances forbid it. Their churches are dependent on the 
State, are ruled b}^ civil authority, have no proper ecclesiastical 
authority or power of their own. How, standing in the bosom of 
such Erastian s}^stems,can German theologians be considered good 
authority for any thing that has to do with the proper solution of 
the Church Question ? We profess no agreement with them here, 
and ask from them no endorsement of our views. We know that 
we stand upon higher ground. Who among us can think of ac- 
cepting Rothe's idea of the Church, by which it is made to merge 
itself at last formally in the Christian State ? Who that has had 
the least insight into the miserable church relations of the late Dr. 
Ullmann, Prelate so called of the Church in Baden, would be will- 
ing to take him as a sound expositor of what the article of the 
Church means in the Apostles' Creed ? And just so with the judg- 
ment of the excellent Dr. Dorner, quoted against our Liturgy on 
the subject of Ordination. It is only what was to be expected. 
It carries with it for us no weight whatever. God forbid that we 
should be bound here by Prussian examples or Prussian opinions. 

One great object with Dorner, in his first book, is to bring clearly 
into view the original and only proper sense of the material prin- 
ciple of Protestantism, as it conditioned and determined also, at 
the same time, the sense of its formal principle. On these two 
grand hinges, in right relation to one another, justification by faith 
and the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, the universal weight 
of the Reformation must necessarily rest and turn. But the only 
real foundation of Christianity, objectively considered, is Christ 
Himself. Great stress then is laid here on the thought, that justify- 
ing faith, in the Reformation sense of the term, amounted to a real 
self-authenticating apprehension of Christ's righteousness through 
an actual laying hold of his person and life. In other words, that 
in which Christianity started within the soul, was held to be not 
just the idea of the atonement after all; but this idea lodged in the 
Incarnate Word, as the power of salvation back of all Christ's 



T34 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

doings and merits in any farther view. This is all ver} 7 well, and 
as we believe profoundly true. The article of a standing or falling 
Church becomes thus Christological,in the fullest sense of the term. 
It centres upon the person of Christ, and has no meaning or truth 
in any other view. Dorner sees well, that in no other view can 
there be any room to speak either of theological consistency or of 
historical continuity for Protestantism; without this, it must re- 
solve itself into endless confusion and chaos. We may well say, 
therefore, that in thus maintaining the Christological sense of 
Luther's doctrine of justification b}^ faith, Dorner has in truth 
planted himself on what must be considered the very Gibraltar of 
the Protestant cause, if that cause is to be successfully defended at 
all on strictly Protestant ground. 

But has Dr. Dorner now shown himself faithful to his great posi- 
tion, in making no more of it than he has done for the historical 
treatment of his subject? With all our respect for his high name, 
we must say that we think not. We cannot help feeling, all through 
his Histor}^ a certain theological inconsistency, by which he allows 
his view of the ultimate significance of Christ's person for the 
Gospel, to stop short with what it is in one direction onlv (the 
atoning virtue of His death as apprehended by justifying faith), 
while no like account is made apparently of what it must neces- 
sarily be also in other directions. Is it only the priestly office and 
work of Christ, then, that have their root in His person? Is not 
His person just as much the root also of His prophetical office and 
work; and so again the root no less of His kingly office and work? 
It will not do to confine the Christological principle here, as Dorner 
appears to do, and as seems to have been done in some measure 
also by the Reformers of the sixteenth century, to its bearing on 
the cardinal interest of the atonement. The whole Gospel starts in 
Christ, the mystery of the Incarnation, the coming together of God 
and man in His person. This is the beginning and foundation of 
all that follows; and in taking in this, the faith that gives us an 
interest in the atonement (the material principle of Protestantism) 
brings into us in truth the power of his universal life, as related to 
the purposes of our salvation. All this we have in the Creed. 
There Christianity begins in Christ, and rolls itself forward in the 
grand and glorious life-stream of the Church. The forgiveness of 
sins (on which Luther first fastened the anchor of his faith) is there 
in its proper place; but there too are other articles, supposed to 
be comprehended with equal necessity in the Christian mystery — 
God manifest in the flesh. There in particular is the article of the 



Chap. LII] review of dorner's history T35 

Church, drawing after it unquestionably, not only the idea of 
sacramental grace which Dorner admits, but the idea also of an 
Apostolical ministry by Divine consecration (as we have it in Eph. 
iv. T— 15), which Dorner takes pains, if we understand him properly, 
to let us know he does not admit. Here, we say, we feel his whole 
position, and the whole argument of his History to be unsatis- 
factory and wrong; and just here, as we have had occasion to say 
before, we break with the modern German theology generally, much 
as we admire it otherwise, because we find it untrue to its own 
Christological principle. The virus of Erastianism is everywhere 
in its veins. We are willing to meet all parties, German or Eng- 
lish, on the basis of the Apostles' Creed; but, God helping us, we 
will not consent to stand with any of them anywhere else. 

I. The fact of a progressive falling away of Protestant theology 
and Christianity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from 
what they were in the sixteenth century, is not to be denied; and 
whether we may be willing or not to accept Dr. Dorner's view of 
it in all particulars, it is certain that it took place under the general 
character at least, and in the general direction, described in his 
book. The movement was not confined to one Confession or to any 
single country; it extended to both Communions, the Lutheran and 
the Reformed alike, and made itself felt in all lands. It showed 
itself in this way to be the result of a common law, and the out- 
working product of some common cause ; whose action must be re- 
garded as starting in the religious life of the Reformation period 
itself. In other words, the movement must be considered as of a 
plainly historical character; capable, in such view, of being ex- 
plained and understood, and challenging the most serious and sol- 
emn attention of all who take an interest in the present condition 
of the Church. 

The movement involves two grand stages; two contradictory 
tendencies, so related that the second begins to work while the first 
is still in full power; works in the bosom of the first as its own re- 
coiling force, till it becomes finally of overmastering strength, and 
then sweeps all before it in the way of open revolution and change. 
The first of the two stages is the period of what Dorner calls one- 
sided objectivity (whether in dogma or ecclesiastical constitution) ; 
the second is that of reactionary subjectivity, ending in the nega- 
tion of all positive authority in religion (theoretical free-thinking 
and practical unchurchliness). The first meets us predominantly 
in the seventeenth centurj 7 ; the secOnd in the eighteenth. 

The seventeenth century, in this view, stands in close connec- 



736 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

tion with the sixteenth, the age of the Reformation, and seems to 
be at first the simple continuation of its religious and theological 
life. The great object, all round, was to organize and consolidate 
the faith that was alreaclj^ enshrined in the Protestant symbolical 
books. But it is eas} T to see, that this zeal for the conservation of 
what was thus handed down as true Protestant Christianity, ran 
soon into a care for its outward form simply at the expense of its 
inward life. The faith of the sixteenth century was so intellec- 
tualized, as to be shorn of its original native vigor and force. We 
feel that, where we cannot always explain it, in comparing the 
spiritual life of the older time with the orthodox thinking of the 
later time. There was a something here in the theology of the six- 
teenth centuiy, which we find to be wanting in the more elaborate 
divinity of the seventeenth. So in the Lutheran Church; and so 
also, full as much, in the Reformed Church. 

The theolog3 T of the seventeenth century must be considered in 
this view, universally, a falling away inwardly (though not out- 
wardly), from the original life of the Reformation; which then 
drew after it, however, by a sort of logical necessity, a far more 
serious falling away from itself, as well as from the older faith, in 
the overflowing rationalism of the eighteenth centuiy. Dorner re- 
solves all this into the dissolution of the original unity of the two- 
fold principle of Protestantism, and the wrong that was thus in- 
flicted on the side which represented the inward freedom of the be- 
liever, by making all of the side that represented outward authority ; 
a wrong, which then by a righteous nemesis so reacted upon itself, 
as to end in the overthrow of this authority altogether, and the 
full unbinding of the principle of subjectivit}^ in all imaginable 
forms. How far this may bear close examination, we will not now 
stop to inquire. Enough, that we know the fact, and are able to 
bring it under consideration in its general historical connections. 
The eighteenth centuiy, immediately behind us, was an age of what 
maybe called general religious atrophy; an age of feeble, languish- 
ing faith; an age in which sense and natural reason had come to 
rule everywhere the thinking of the world, while things unseen and 
eternal were regarded for the most part as visionary abstractions. 
Not that all theolog3 r and religion were dead ; the religious spirit 
wrought mightily in certain quarters against the reigning power 
of unbelief. But still the power of unbelief did reign, on all sides, 
in fact; and this not onbv as open free-thinking and infidelit}', but 
as a secret virus also, that served to poison and weaken the very 
life of faith itself. There was a malaria of rationalism diffused 



Chap. LII] answer to professor dorner 737 

through the whole religions world. The best piety of the age was 
of a scrofulous habit ; while its best theology went wheezing con- 
tinually toward its own grave. 

II. We may be thankful that we come after the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Our own age is bad enough ; but it is certainly better in 
many respects than its predecessor. The movement of religious 
negation seems to have run its course ; so far at least that it has 
come to stultify itself, and thus call for the building up again of 
what it has sought to destroj^, while the conditions for such recon- 
struction are at hand as they never have been before. The great 
problem for the nineteenth century would seem to be the restora- 
tion of faith from the disastrous eclipse, under which it has come 
down to us from the century going before, and along with this the 
recovery of theology and religion to some answerable tone of vitality 
and health. 

An interesting and able article on the Liturgical Controvers}- of 
the German Reformed Church in the United States, appears in a 
late number of the Jahrbucher fur deutsclie Theologie, from the 
pen of the celebrated Dr. Dorner of Berlin. 

We have reason to feel ourselves complimented, as a Church, by 
such notice directed towards us from so high a quarter. It is the 
first time that the course of theology in this country has drawn 
upon itself, to any such extent, the observation and criticism of a 
leading German Review. The theological scholarship of Germany 
has been very much in the habit of slighting the movement of re- 
ligious thought both in England and in the United States, as hardly 
deserving to be considered scientific at all in any true sense of the 
term. Dr. Dorner himself, in his Histo^ of Protestant Theology, 
finds but little to say on the subject; two or three pages at the 
close of the work being all he considers necessar}^ to devote, in 
particular, to this country. "In North America,' 1 he tells us, 
"there is hardly as yet, so far as we are able to see, any connected 
literary history." He expresses the hope, however, that a better 
era for scientific theology is before us ; and ends his book finally 
with these significant words : 

"America is still in the commencement only of its theological 
life ; but the future of Protestantism depends, in a large measure, 
on the future development of this vigorous people, now emanci- 
pated also from the curse of slavery; making it thus of incalculable 
importance, that the intercourse which has been opened there with 
German Protestantism and its results, should be maintained and 



138 AT LANCASTER FROM 1861-1876 [DlV. XI 

enlarged. At present divisions abound, and the opposition of par- 
ties is too much a matter of wilfulness and mere outward interest 
to lead to any earnest scientific conflict. But in proportion as the 
sense for science increases, and along with this the power of 
thought, which tends always to union by being directed toward the 
general and the absolutely true, the more must many of the de- 
nominations now existing in the country pass away of themselves; 
whilst others will enter upon a course of mutual understanding, 
that may be expected to secure for their spiritual and religious life 
a common histor} T , which, with that of Great Britain, will rival in 
full finally the fruitfulness of German science." 

It is complimentary, I repeat, then, in such view of the case, that 
the consideration of Germany is now directed toward the theolog- 
ical discussions of our American Reformed Church, in the waj- we 
find it to be in this extended and respectful criticism coming from 
so great a man. 

It is a matter for congratulation, moreover, that these discussions 
themselves are in this way gaining broader and more earnest atten- 
tion. The subjects with which they are employed deserve it. There 
have been those among us, we know, who have not been disposed 
to regard them in such light. But in truth, there are no more 
practically important questions before the Christian world, at this 
time, than just these theological debates with which our Church is 
now so earnestly engaged. They have to do with the most central 
and profound interests of Christianity. It may possibly help to 
open the eyes of some to their significance, that they are made, in 
the case before us, the object of so learned a review in the Berlin 
Jahrbucher. Dorner's article shows that the} 7 are not mere word- 
fights, or controversies about things of little or no account. 

Let us trust also that it may help to lift the general discussion 
above the level of mere party prejudice and strife, and to give it 
such a character of decency and fair conduct, as all may see to be 
suitable to its great importance. Very much of the opposition 
which has been made in this country thus far to what is called, for 
distinction's sake, the Mercersburg theology, has been, in a form, 
the very reverse of all this. It has taken no pains to understand 
what it has set itself to condemn. Its onh T force has been in 
garbled misrepresentation, special pleadings, ad captandum appeals 
to popular prejudice and abusive scurrilities of the lowest and 
poorest sort. I have my self been pelted of late with any amount 
of this polemical mud. It admits, of course, of no notice or reply: 
Men must learn to be decent before they can be reasoned with as 



Chap. LII] answer to professor dorner T39 

rational or moral. In such circumstances, however, it is especially 
refreshing to fall in with such an altogether different stjde of con- 
troversy, as we have offered to us in this transatlantic article of 
Professor Dorner. It is serious, dignified, calm, gentlemanly and 
Christian. Why is it, that the qualities of controversial truth and 
fairness are so much harder to be maintained in this country, than 
seems to be the case in Europe ? We know how it is with our com- 
mon political press, as contrasted with that of England. Is it any 
better, in the end, with our religious press ? 

Let Dorner's article serve as an example, and as a rebuke, for 
this wretched style of controversy. It is worthy of being widely 
known and read for this purpose only, if for no other. I am not 
sorry to hear, therefore, that it is in the way of being published 
for general circulation among us, both in German and English. It 
may do good ; and I have no apprehension, at all events, of its do- 
ing any harm. 



XII— IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 

Mt. 73-83 



CHAPTER LIII 



AS the reader has doubtless observed, Dr. Kevin with his strong 
- intellectual powers possessed naturally a mystical tendency 
which grew more palpable as he advanced in years. This showed 
itself manifestly after he retired from his duties in the College. 
It was a characteristic of his experience for him to look at the 
spiritual and the invisible, and the importance of this posture of 
mind he was wont to impress on others in his discourses and writ- 
ings. Afflictions in his fainihy tended to confirm this tendenc}\ 
In the 3 T ear 186T his son, Richard Cecil, a promising 3 T outh and a 
candidate for the Christian Ministry, was taken from the family by 
an untimely death. In the year 1812, John Williamson, the 
youngest in the family, who was expected to reside with his 
parents and be a support to them in their declining years, in the 
bloom of youth, was also snatched away by the fell destroyer. 
These painful dispensations served more directly to turn the mind 
of Dr. Kevin away from this world of fleeting shadows to that which 
is fixed and eternal. During this period of time in such a state of 
mind he became interested in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, 
the great Swedish nrystie. He had given his writings some atten- 
tion, whilst he was studying the Church question, and, as we have 
seen, could see in them no satisfactory answer to the problem 
with which he was grappling. He believed in history and in its 
development, whilst Swedenborg and Professor Thiersch, the 
Irvingite, looked for some supernatural, miraculous interposition 
of Providence to bring order out of the confusion in the body of 
the Church, which no one having faith in histoiy or a Divine Prov- 
idence, such as Dr. Nevin possessed, would be willing to postulate. 
Dr. Nevin's attention was probably directed to Swedenborg's 
works, more particularly by Richard Rothe. After looking over 
his writings, he once said he found it difficult to interest himself in 
them until he met with his Commentaries on the Old Testament, in 
which he saw much that found a response in his own experience. 

(740) 



Chap. LIII] mystical tendencies 141 

The spiritual, mystical and symbolical interpretations fell in with 
his taste, and he secured a Latin edition of his works, which he 
perused with pleasure, and, as he said, with edification. He soon 
discovered that he possessed a much greater genius than was gen- 
erally conceded at the time. Mcehler, the great catholic theologian, 
who exposed his Sabellianism and other unchurchly tenets, says 
"he was distinguished, on the one hand, for acuteness of intellect, 
and for a wide range of knowledge, — particularly in the mathe- 
matics and the natural sciences, which he cultivated with great suc- 
cess, as evinced by his many writings, highly prized in his day ; 
and, on the other hand, he was noted for his full conviction, that 
he held intercourse with the world of spirits, whereby he believed 
that he obtained information on all matters in anywise claiming 
the attention of the religious man." — Gorres says in his work on 
Swedenborg "that it has been proved, from the very high charac- 
ter of this visionary, acknowledged by his contemporaries to be 
pure and blameless, that the idea of intentional deceit, on his part, 
cannot be at all entertained ; and that his ecstacies may be best ex- 
plained by animal magnetism." — Dr. Nevin's view of Swedenborg 
as a man was the most original, and, perhaps, the most correct, 
when he once told the writer that, " standing in the sphere of nature, 
without regard to the form of his writings, he regarded him as one 
of the greatest poets and philosophers, if not the greatest, not ex- 
cepting Dante and Kant." 

After his retirement from public life in 18*76 he wrote the follow- 
ing ten articles for the Reformed Church Review : The Spiritual 
World ; The Testimony of Jesus ; The Spirit of Prophecy; Biblical 
Anthropolog}- ; Sacred Hermeneutics, or God's Yoice out of the 
Cloud; The Bread of Life, a Communion Sermon; The Pope's 
Encyclical; Christ, the Inspiration of His Word; and the Inspira- 
tion of the Bible, or the Internal Sense of Holy Scripture. To- 
gether they filled 318 pages of the Review. They are all character- 
ized by their deep spirituality and their breadth of view. No one, 
we believe, can read them without having his religious sensibilities 
quickened and his heart strengthened. He wrote the last with ex- 
treme difficulty in the use of his fingers whilst writing, and as his 
right hand had, in a manner, forgotten its cunning, he wrote nothing 
further for publication. Our space here will allow us to give the 
reader only brief extracts from the last two articles named, which 
will serve to illustrate his mystical and theosophic tendencies, as 
well as his allegorico-mystical Exegesis. In the latter respect he 
was no doubt stimulated by the Swedish seer, but it was a phenome- 



742 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

non that has manifested itself in all ages of the Church, especially 
in the Alexandrine school of theology, as also in the Jewish. In 
the case of Dr. Nevin it was a Christian mysticism, which, whilst 
it made supreme account of the spirit, did not lead him, as he used 
to say, "to abate one jot or tittle of the letter," in the actual his- 
torical narratives of the Bible. — With him it was a health}^ check 
upon his intense intellectualism, which otherwise might have carried 
him awa3' into the barren regions of rationalism. 

Christianity begins in Christ, moves throughout in Christ, and 
ends in Christ. It does so doctrinally, and it does so practically. 
There is now, we are told, a growing recognition of this from all 
sides. Less than half a century ago, as some of us remember, it 
was quite otherwise. The very terms Christological and Christo- 
centric, as applied to theolog} T , were viewed by many with grave 
apprehension and distrust. Did they not carry with them an echo 
of Schleiermacher? Had the} T not in them a touch of Hegelian 
pantheism? At an}^ rate, could they not be felt to be somehow off 
the track of modern evangelicalism, not harmonizing rightly with 
its pet traditional shibboleths, and jostling uncomfortably its work- 
ing methods of religious life and belief? Be the case as it might, 
the system which pretended to make full earnest with the idea that 
Jesus Christ is Himself literally the entire sum and substance of 
Christian^, was not in favor with our American Churches gener- 
ally. Where they did not openly oppose it, they had at least no 
heart to profess it openly. But all that, it appears, is now past. 
The era of Christological theology has set in with a force which 
may be said, so far at least as profession goes, to carry all before 
it. Our evangelical denominations are in a sort of haste to put 
themselves right in regard to this point. The significance of 
Christ's person is paraded on every hand, as the only true centre 
of Christianity, as the only real soul of a living Christian faith. 

So far as it goes this is of course well. We have reason to be 
pleased with it, even if it be open to some question ; and ma}*- say 
with St. Paul to the Philippians, "whether in pretence, or in truth, 
Christ is preached, and we do therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." 
The only wonder in the case is that there could ever be any room, 
among professing Christians, to think or speak of Christianity as 
not being Christological in this general view. For is it not a 
Gospel truism, for all those who believe in the Gospel, that Christ 
is for the spiritual world what the sun is for the natural world? 
So that a solar system without the light and poise of its proper 



Chap. LIII] the interior sense. 743 

centre in such form must be taken as a faint image only of what 
God's new creation in Christ Jesns would be, without the presence 
in it of the Lord of life and glory Himself forever ruling it in like 
central waj T . 

But we may not rest here in this merely general view. All the 
great truths of Christianity come before us first of all under such 
general or common aspect; but only that they may be filled out 
then afterwards with specific particulars and details, by which they 
are carried forward continually more and more toward the fulness 
of their proper sense in God. Only as they thus live and move 
toward the infinite, first on earth and afterwards in heaven, can 
they be said to be truths at all. How, then, must it not be thus 
also with the fountain head of all Christian truths, Jesus Christ 
Himself, when brought within the telescopic range of human or 
angelic vision? For any seriously thoughtful mind the question 
answers itself. 

And thus it is that we are brought finally to the inmost and 
highest mode of looking at Christ and His kingdom ; that by which 
we communicate directly with the veritable life of the Lord Him- 
self, and so are made to see Him in some measure as He is in His 
own actual being, high above all terrestrial and even celestial glory 
in every lower form. In distinction from the mechanical and the- 
oretic modes of apprehending divine things this may be denomi- 
nated the vital mode. It brings us to the conception of Christian 
faith in its true and full form. There is room indeed to speak of 
faith, and so of life also, as belonging to the lower planes of knowl- 
edge we have named. But that then is only through obscure deri- 
vation of light into these lower spheres from the sphere above them, 
when they are found in what we have just seen to be their only 
normal relation to this, as precursive stadia toward the coming of 
the new man in Christ Jesus. In themselves, outside of this 
heavenly revelation, they have in them no life, and no light, and 
therefore no vision of faith ; because there can be in them no radia- 
tion from the great centre of all being, the love of God in His Son 
Jesus Christ. 

Just here it is that we have the true idea of faith, as distinguished 
from all inferior knowledge and intelligence. It is the vision of 
God in God, the seeing of divine things in their own divine lights. 
Unintelligible mystery and nonsense of course to the universal 
natural mind; but the only key nevertheless that can ever surely 
open to us the interior sense of the Bible. For the Bible is full of 
it, Old Testament and New, from beginning to end. It is the 



744 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

evidence and demonstration of things which are supernatural and 
invisible to mere worldh 7 sense or thought or reason, because it is 
itself born of them and is the power of seeing them therefore as 
the} T are in their own light. " It is not of yourselves," says St. 
Paul, "it is the gift of God " (Eph. ii. 8). Only we must not think 
of it then in the outward mechanical or in the merely theoretic 
way; it comes into us in the way of actual life from the Lord, 
reaching us by the living word of the Lord, which is thus at once 
then both this word itself and its own vision in our souls from the 
Lord Himself. His life from the beginning, we are expressly told, 
has been the only true light of men (John i. 4) ; which is also the 
meaning of the Psalmist when he says :' " With Thee is the fountain 
of life; in Thy light shall we see light" (Ps. xxxvi. 9). 

The Divine Trinity comes into intelligible view only in the person 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. "No man (outside of Him) hath seen 
Gfod at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, He hath declared Him." Not theoretically of course; 
not doctrinalfv; but as being himself actually the life, and power, 
and gloryof the Father. "No man knoweth the Father," He Him- 
self tells us, "but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
reveal Him." Through the Son there is a real knowing of the 
Father, and so of the whole Trinity ; not indeed the infinite know- 
ing which belongs to the Son ; but still in its finite degree of one 
nature with that; not black agnosticism by any means, but a real 
revelation, making itself known as the light of life from God in the 
rational soul of every true believer. 

Manifested in this way, the Holy Trinity comes before us, not as 
a dead fact, but as an organized living and working Infinite Love, 
Infinite Wisdom, and Infinite Power, whose threefold distinction 
may never be separated for a moment from its fundamental unity. 
Holding the mystery strictly, as we must, to the person of Christ, 
in whom only it is revealed, there is no room for any doubt in re- 
gard to its general constitution and order. He is its only manifes- 
tation, the central unity in which its whole triplicity comes together 
as an object of faith. "In him dwelleth," we are told, "all the ful- 
ness of the Godhead bodily." That at once makes Him to be the 
very wholeness of God, the one only absolute and true God. We 
have no right to think of God in any other form ; and when we do 
so, we are but dealing with a metaphysical abstraction, which is at 
bottom a denial of His actual being altogether. Nothing can be 
clearer or stronger than the self-testimon}^ of Christ, in His Word, 
on this point. He and the Father are one ; all things of the Father 



Chap. Llll] the interior sense 745 

are His ; and in Him is comprehended in like manner the entire 
presence and working of the Holy Ghost. " We know that the Son 
of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may 
know Him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in His 
Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." All 
other view of the Divine is but the creature of man's own imagina- 
tion, vain and false. And therefore it is added solemnly, " Little 
children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John v. 20, 21). 

The doctrine of the Trinity thus, in Jesus Christ, is supremely 
practical, passing safely the shoals of Deism, Unitarianism, and 
Mohammedanism on the one hand, while it avoids on the other 
hand the no less common and dangerous heresy of Tritheism, the 
worship of three Gods instead of one. 

We are brought thus to the true touch-stone or test of Inspiration. 
In the midst of all conflicting schemes and theories, the Bible itself 
shuts us up to this as being its inmost essence, namely, Christ Him- 
self in the AYord, both as the wisdom of God and the power of God 
unto salvation. Not merely with the Word externally, or above 
it, by the separate action of His Spirit, but in the very bosom of 
the Word as its actual spirit and life. A hard saying, exclaims the 
natural mind; who can hear it? But have we not his own witness 
for it, in the direct face of that unbelieving question : " The words 
that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life " (John vi. 
63) ? It is sorry subterfuge to limit this to what goes before in the 
same chapter. It refers to His words universally. All words 
going out from Him, the absolute life and truth, must be of this 
character — must be by that fact itself supernatural and inspired 
words. And how then can it be otherwise with the words he spake 
in time past by the prophets, through the Holy Ghost, the Giver of 
life? Inspiration means such life to start with; but if so, it means 
also such life abiding with it through all following time. For ex- 
ample, the life which was breathed into the Ten Commandments 
when they were first spoken from mount Sinai, must be in them to 
this day, if they are still inspired. In no other view can they be 
said to be the word of God which lioeth and abideth forever. We 
might as well talk of the stars being settled in heaven, without 
having in them still the life of the word which first spake them into 
being. 

Much of the debate we have at the present time concerning In- 
spiration becomes here of no account. The question especially be- 
tween verbalism and what we may call realism falls to the ground ; 
because both these theories rest on a lower plane altogether than 
4f 



T46 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

that of the high C histological truth now before us, and both alike 
therefore, in its presence, come under what is substantially the 
same condemnation. They give us on both sides what is at best, 
b3 T their own confession, but a natural inspiration instead of a 
spiritual inspiration; a providential leading of ordinary human 
thought and speech, in difference from the actual descent of the 
Divine itself into such human thought and speech. In this view 
both violate the inward sanctity of the Word of God, by turning it 
into a Word of man. Yerbalism stiffens thus into mechanical 
bondage; while realism evaporates into latitudinarian freedom, 
losing itself at last in broad open rationalism. 

Our Christocentric theology, therefore, can never stop safety in 
smy such intellectual or merely sentimental flight. It must mount 
up b} T faith to an empyrean height far be} T ond this. "Hast thou 
not known," is the voice of our glorified Jehovah Immanuel Him- 
self; "hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the 
Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary ? 
There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to 
the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. 
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the 3 T oung men shall 
utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall 
run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Is. xl. 
28-31). 

I quote these great words, not at random, nor for any mere rhe- 
torical effect. They go directly to the heart of the subject which I 
have now in hand — namely this : the central meaning of the Gos- 
pel, as the disclosure of a new world of powers in the living Christ, 
transcending supernatural^ the universal constitution of nature, 
and canying in itself both the promise and the possibility of vic- 
tory for our fallen human ity over all the evils under which it is 
found groaning so hopelessly through the ages, in every other view. 
They fix attention on the great thought of the world's redemption, 
not as a philosophical dream, not as a Zoroastrian .m} T th of any 
sort, and not as the figment of a Christ aiming to rectify the dis- 
order of sin through airy simply outward teaching or working in 
God's name ; but as nothing less in truth than the coming down of 
God Himself into the sphere of the fallen, and within their reach, 
for the purpose of joining them, through a new spiritual birth, with 
Himself, and thus raising them to the actual life of heaven. 

This is the great thought indeed which underlies the entire struc- 
ture of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. No part of 



Chap. LIII] the interior sense l 74t 

the Word of God there, the "things written in the law of Moses, 
and in the prophets, and in the psalms," is at all intelligible without 
it. The Jews of old would not see it or believe it ; and their un- 
belief here is charged against them as the verjr culmination of their 
refusal to believe in Christ Himself. Can it be ai^ better than 
such Jewish self-condemnation, when men calling themselves Chris- 
tians now refuse in the same way to see or own the Lord directly 
in these Scriptures? Most, surely such persons cannot seriously 
believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament. They may say 
they do so; but it is a contradiction in terms to predicate divine 
inspiration of a book, and yet hold that Christ, the source of all 
real living inspiration, is not in it except as our poor human think- 
ing about Him may be supposed somehow to put Him there. 

What we need above all things in our Christian life is to see and 
know, that we have to do in it not with the notion simply of spirit- 
ual and heavenly things ; but with those things as they are in their 
own actual being and objectivity. How slow we are to learn com- 
monly that religion is for us, at all points, a question, not of no- 
tions, but of divine realities — a matter, not for speculation, but for 
living personal experience. Through want of due regard to this 
distinction, we are ever in danger of wronging even the first prin- 
ciples of what we call our Christian faith. Our faith itself, on 
which so much depends, becomes for us thus too often only a sort 
of talismanic rod to conjure with ; while the doctrines we hold are 
found to be little better than a ghostly simulacrum simply of the 
high spiritual realities they are meant to express. This, of course, 
is deplorable enough where it affects any of the simply derivative 
articles of the true Christian creed ; but how much more so When 
it is found affecting, not such secondary doctrines only, but the 
very fountain head of all revelation and all doctrine as we have it 
in the Lord of life and glory Himself. 

Here all depends on the felt presence of the life and glory of 
Christ as they are in themselves. Without this, the highest soar- 
ing of our notional faith becomes but a mockery of what it pre- 
tends to see and acknowledge. A hollow Christology in such form 
goes beyond all other hollowness in its power to lay waste the 
Christian system. It is the supreme heresy; the great red seven- 
headed and ten-horned dragon of the Apocalypse ; the heresy of all 
other heresies; just because it goes to extinguish, as far as it pre- 
vails, the Sun of righteousness in the Christian heaven; and to hurl 
down from thence to the earth all the stars of true Christian intel- 
ligence. A merely gnostic docetic Christ has been in all ages the 



748 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

inmost central enemj- of Christianity, warring not only against the 
true idea of Christ Himself, but against the substance and living 
power, at the same time, of eveiy evangelical truth flowing from 
this idea. 

A merely gnostic docetic Christ, it can never be too loudly pro- 
claimed, brings gnosticism and unreality into eveiy head and topic 
of Christian theology, as well as into all Christian worship. It 
steals away the true heart of all evangelic religion, turning its wor- 
ship into mummery and cant, and its good works into pharisaic 
externalism. It poisons the life out of all evangelical doctrines, 
by substituting for the breath of God's Spirit in them, the miser- 
able breath of its own spiritualistic imaginings, which are earthlr 
only and not heavenly, born of the natural human self, and there- 
fore diabolic and infernal. In this way there is no doctrine, how- 
ever high or sacred, such as the hoi} 7 Trinit} 7 , the incarnation, the 
righteousness of Christ, the atonement, regeneration, and all the 
rest, which it is not found possible for this proton pseudos to infect 
where it prevails with its own bad leaven, and thus to turn its 
proper vitality into corruption and death. 

Here then only we see how it is that the intellectual side of 
Christianity is to become practical, moral or ethical, as the world 
affects to call it, in distinction from the bigotiy of creeds. The 
intellectual is indeed but the outward side of what is to be under- 
stood by the moral. It must have its soul in this to be at all real ; 
and for this purpose, it must have in it the power of actual life. 
But then, where shall such empowering life be found? In the 
human mind or soul itself, answers humanitarianism ; it belongs to 
men as an inherent part of their creation. miserable madness 
and folly! Life is not thus creatable, nor atomistic, nor subject to 
the measurement of time and space. It belongs in its essence and 
fulness only to the absolute being of God ; and if it is to be in men 
at all, naturally or ethically, it must be in them first of all spirit- 
ually, as the gift of God, made continuous in them onlj T through 
continuous derivation from its everlasting fountain in God. Such 
is the voice with which we are met from the inmost sanctuary of 
divine revelation. The voice, which alone, sounding forth from 
between the wings of the cherubim, can ever open to us the real 
meaning of the Christian redemption and salvation ; the real sig- 
nificance of our Lord's humbling Himself to be born of a virgin, 
that He might, through His personal triumphs over hell, throw 
open to men the gates of paradise, otherwise so hopelessl}' closed 
against them b} r the fall. Just this, and nothing less than this, is 



Chap. LIII] the interior sense 149 

the boon established and confirmed to ns first of all by His death 
and resurrection, His ascension and glorification, and His being 
made in His divine humanity head over all things to His true in- 
visible Church; which is united and joined to Him through the 
power of His glorified life, as the body of a man is joined to his 
living soul. 

All the realms of natural science are turned into darkness, where 
there is no power to study, them in their relation to the kingdom 
of heaven, descending upon them, and into them, from the fountain 
of all life, in Him who is here the absolute supreme, the beginning, 
the middle, and end of the works of God. Men of science, of course, 
are not ordinarily prepared to admit this. Nature seems to lie be- 
fore them as an open book, capable of being read from within itself, 
without any higher help. Its truths, as they call them, carry in 
themselves, as far as they go, their own evidence and demonstra- 
tion ; and to talk of their needing any sort of verification from a 
supposed higher spiritual or supernatural sphere, they regard as 
palpably absurd. Where such thinking has sway, there can be, of 
course, no real belief in divine revelation under any form; and, 
least of all, under the conception of such a living headship as is 
set before us in the Divine-human Christ, exalted in the way we 
have seen far above all worlds and all heavens. And it is very no- 
ticeable, accordingly, how our men of science, general^ even where 
they may condescendingly allow a divine principle of some sort 
back of their dead naturalism, yet shrink from the owning of it in 
any such concrete realistic shape as this, as though it must prove 
fatal at once to all their scientific pretensions. But this simply 
shows how grossly unscientific their science is, in not being able 
to bear the Ithuriel touch of that great word, "I am Alpha and 
Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last" (Rev. 
xxii. 13). 



CHAPTER LIV 

A FTER Dr. Kevin had retired from active duty in the Church, 
-£^- he endeavored to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all god- 
liness and honest}^; and as he said to more persons than his cousin, 
to prepare himself for another world. He wrote from time to time, 
as we have seen, for the Reformed Church Review, until the } T ear 
1883, when failing eye-sight and trembling hand made it very diffi- 
cult to him any longer to wield his pen. — As often as he was called 
on, he preached in the College Chapel, and it is generally conceded 
that his last discourses were among the most remarkable that he 
ever delivered, both as it regards spirituality and wide range of 
thought. In former times he laid emphasis on the thought that 
our own world was an organic whole, which was to be saved and 
redeemed by Christianity; but, as if his range of spiritual vision had 
widened, he began more and more to look upon the entire universe 
as an organism, in which Christ was the head over innumerable 
worlds, inhabited by intelligent beings like ourselves. — It is most 
likely he was stimulated to take this view of the case by the Swedish 
prophet. — The length of his sermons was increased rather than 
diminished. In one instance he delivered three introductory dis- 
courses, before he came to consider the more immediate subject of his 
text. The third was the last which he ever delivered. For some 
years his voice was as firm and sonorous as when he first preached in 
the College Chapel at Mercersburg. At length it lost its energy, and 
he confined himself to his ordinary conversational style of speak- 
ing. Soon this also cost him too much physical exertion, and hav- 
ing preached his last sermon, he became a devout worshipper and an 
attentive listener to others, who often reproduced his own thoughts, 
whilst he, sitting invariably in the same seat on the side of the 
chancel, like his namesake among the Apostles, seemed to be present 
as the presiding elder or spirit in the Church. 

He continued to take an intelligent interest in the important 
events of the day; but all the while he seemed to regard the world 
as being in a crisis, on the eve of great changes, in which the past 
would be buried, and a new era was to dawn for the world in the 
coming of Christ in His Kingdom. In this posture of mind he re- 
sembled Neander, who was accustomed thus to regard the course of 
human events and to observe the signs of the times. 

(750) 



Chap. LIY] reminiscences 751 

The spiritual and invisible appeared to engage his attention and 
thoughts more than a^^thing else. The Bible was his daily study 
and delight. When no longer able to trace the letters on its pages, 
it was read to him in the Latin translation, which he regarded as 
particularly expressive. — On one occasion he commenced a con- 
versation with a young friend on the veranda on the subject of the 
Scriptures, which was prolonged on his part for an hour. Among 
other things he criticised the modern system of education as defi- 
cient in the attention paid to memory, the idea being that the old 
mechanical method of memorizing was of no real benefit to the 
mind. In his opinion memor}^ as a faculty was deteriorating under 
the new ideas. When } r oung it is easy for the mind to memorize, 
but with age the other faculties become more active, and it is more 
difficult to remember words, facts or events. He said that, if he 
then had a child to train, he thought one of the most important 
things to attend to in its education would be to store its receptive 
mind with words of Scripture and the answers in the Catechism. 
Thus in after years they would come up in its recollections as 
words of strength and comfort in time of need. — He also spoke of 
his Princeton professor, when he was a student, who required all 
the members of his class to memorize a verse of the Bible, daity, 
and at the opening of each recitation some one was called on to 
repeat the verse he had thus committed — to show that the task had 
been properly attended to. From that time he said that he adopted 
it as a rule to memorize a portion of Scripture every day- — nulla 
dies sine versu — and that it was now a matter of regret to him that 
he had not pursued this as a rule of his life at an earlier clay when 
he was still a child; but that it was, at the same time, a source of 
much comfort to him, as that which had been stored away in his 
memory came up vividly before his mind, furnishing him with in- 
teresting topics for thought and meditation in his old age. 

On another occasion, the Rev. Dr. Jacob 0. Miller, of York, Pa., 
one of his students at Mercersburg, but at the time a member of the 
Board of Trustees of the College, and one of his firmest supports in 
his many fruitful labors in the past, called to see him and found him 
alone in his study. The world had become dim and misty to his 
vision, and he could not distinguish the features of his old friend 
and former pupil, but he recognized him at once by his familiar 
voice. Referring to his eye-sight, he expressed his gratitude to 
God that he had been led to commit so much of the Scripture to 
memory; and then, as if awakened from a dream, he went on to 
speak of the great beauty and excellence of the word of God; 



T52 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

which was refreshing in the highest degree to one who was a ver} T 
attentive listener. — The habit here referred to will serve to explain 
the facilit}^ and accurac} 7 with which Dr. Nevin was accustomed to 
quote the Scriptures in his discourses and writings. He never hes- 
itated and seldom, if ever, failed to use the precise words in his 
quotations. 

He had always been accustomed to walk from his house to 
the College, a distance of nearly a mile, for the sake of exercise, 
until some time before his decease. He then came with the 
family, in his carriage, to attend worship in the College Chapel. 
Once whilst waiting after service in front of the building for his 
coachman, some one expressed to him his regrets that he could not 
see the beautiful landscape extending far off into the distance. 
With some degree of naivete he replied that it looked to him like 
an ocean of mist, but that it made very little difference to him. He 
had thought that he would suffer most when he should no longer 
be able to read the papers ; but that he had found that such depri- 
vation gave him little or no discomfort, and that it was to him gain 
rather than loss. Through others' ej^es he learned what interested 
him in the affairs of the world, and it was a relief to him not to 
read the promiscuous news of the day. 

At length somewhat apprehensive of a mishap in ascending the 
steps leading up to the Chapel, he gradually ceased to attend divine 
worship. Few, if any, looked at his vacant seat without a feel- 
ing of sadness, and of foreboding that the beginning of the end was 
drawing near. The venerable father, with his silvery hair and his 
devout expression of countenance, was no longer in the midst of 
the congregation to impress others with his saintly presence. 

The communion of the Lord's Supper was celebrated on Easter 
Sunday, April 25, 1886, and Dr. Nevin was once more present in 
his place in the sanctuary, and, as might be supposed, seemed to 
give tone to the service by his venerable appearance. After the 
worship was concluded many gathered around to shake hands with 
him and to congratulate him on seeing him again in church. A 
number of little children went up with their mothers to look at the 
aged patriarch. Without being able to see them, he soon recog- 
nized their presence, and extending out his arms towards them, 
wished them to come nearer; and as he took each small hand made 
some gentle remarks in smiling response to their Easter greetings. 
As he sat there surrounded by the little circle a beautiful and 
affecting picture was impressed on children of older growth, who 
witnessed the scene. This, we may say, was an illustration of the 



Chap. LIV] reminiscences 153 

tender feeling which the presence of little children was wont to 
awaken in Dr. Nevin's mind. More than once, in addressing Sun- 
day-schools, he found it impossible to repress his emotions as he 
referred to the dangers which surrounded them in this world of 
sin, of which they were as yet all unconscious. On such occa- 
sions his voice sometimes faltered and his tongue refused to obey 
his strong will. His silence thus became so much the more elo- 
quent, and there were few in the audience who did not sympathize 
with him. 

The mask of calmnness which he usually wore was broken 
through still more when he officiated in Holy Baptism. Often with 
a little babe in his arms, "the marble man " quivered with emotion 
as he performed the impressive rite ; and he alway s seemed to evince 
special interest in the children he had so consecrated. The last 
time his hands were laid on the head of a child in this solemn act 
was in the College Chapel before the assembled congregation, as he 
gave his own name to his first grandson. 

As we have seen in the earlier part of his life, he made it a point 
to be strict and regular in his private devotions. This habit he 
continued to maintain, in after years, but he also made much ac- 
count of ejaculatoiy prayers, as he called them, which he regarded 
as often more powerful than any other. In such instances the 
Christian, if he could not enter his closet literally, could neverthe- 
less enter the closet of his own mind, and fulfil the spirit of the 
Scriptural precept. But it sometimes happens that the individual — 
like Nathanael under the fig-tree — cannot get where no eye can see 
him. This was true on one occasion, at least, with Dr. Nevin. 
Whilst he was still teaching he once entered his class-room before 
the hour of recitation and locked the door after him. His class 
gathered in the passage and there waited for the opening of the 
door, but it remained still closed. At length one of their number 
looked through the key-hole and there saw his teacher engaged in 
prayer. The youth was amazed. His teacher was on his knees, 
his arms and his body moving as if in some fearful struggle. At 
first he did not know what it meant, but a second look disclosed 
the facts of the case. It was a sight that could never be erased 
from the tablet of memory; and he who witnessed this spectacle 
was no doubt much better qualified when he entered the ministry 
to teach his people how to pray. 

But what was Dr. Nevin praying for behind his desk until the bell 
ringing for recitation should end his praying? His Maker and Sav- 
iour only knew. He no doubt prayed for himself and the students, 



754 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

that they might receive more light; but it is just as easy to suppose 
that he was praying for a better day in Zion, when her conflicts 
and troubles being over she should arise and shine, put on her 
beautiful garments, and become the praise and glory of the whole 
earth. 

Dr. Nevin had many opponents in his day, but he had many more 
devoted friends, affectionate pupils and sympathizing brethren in 
the ministry. All through his life of toil and labor he was made in 
one waj T or another to feel that he had around him those whom he 
could trust and on whom he could rely. The tribute of respect that 
was paid to him in the presentation in 1873, was followed 03" another 
at the Commencement in 1876, when he retired from the presidency 
of the College. On that occasion he was honored with the gift of a 
superbly bound copy of the Bible, which it was felt would be espe- 
cially grateful to his feelings. The presentation was made in 
the presence of a large audience 03- G-eorge F. Baer, Esq., of 
Beading, Pa., to which Dr. Nevin replied in his usually solemn and 
interesting stj'le. The reader can imagine the substance of his 
response, in which as a matter of course he took occasion to speak of 
the grandeur and unspeakable value of the Bible as the Word of 
God. — He assured his friends that down to the latest hour of his 
life he would regard. this cop3 T as one of his most precious treasures. 

But while he held such special testimonies of his friends in the 
highest regard, he valued others, less demonstrative, in equal esti- 
mation. From the yem 1873 his family arranged a reception in his 
behalf at each recurring anniversaiy of his birth. On these occa- 
sions he seemed to renew his youth, as with his quizzical smile he 
received congratulations from 3 7 oung and old. He appeared, how- 
ever, to be especially refreshed 03' the occasional presence of minis- 
ters, alumni, students and others, who on their coming to Lancaster 
felt that their visit would not be complete unless the3 T walked out 
to see Dr. Nevin. In conversation usually some topic would come 
up in which he felt an interest, and he was wont to enlarge on it 
until the monologue assumed the character of a lecture on philos- 
oplry, theolog3 r or religion. After such interviews with the old man 
eloquent, there were few that did not cany with them to their 
homes thoughts that were worthy of a place in the storehouse of 
memoiy. — After Dr. Nevin ceased to preach and write, his conver- 
sational powers seemed to be very much enlarged. It was thus he 
let his light shine as he drew near the close of his life, like the set- 
ting sun illumining the floating clouds in the western sky. 

During the last 3 T ears of his life Dr. Nevin received the affectionate 



Chap. LIV] the funeral 755 

attention of his family. In pleasant weather, with Mrs. Nevin or 
his daughters, he was frequently seen in his carriage, riding over 
the public thoroughfares, but more particularly on College Avenue, 
where the fresh breezes served to invigorate his failing strength. 
The grounds around him were classic and their associations of the 
most hallowed character. Everybody was pleased to see him and 
admired his great vitality and strength; but with this was con- 
nected the sad feeling that his end was hastening apace. After he 
had attended his last communion in the College Chapel he had 
slight attacks of physical weakness, which were premonitory of the 
last and final struggle, when his great vitality and strong will-force 
succumbed to the law of mortality. 

When out on the dark sea in his last illness, even during his un- 
conscious hours, Christ, the God-man, was his stay and support. — 
When the Sabbath hours in June had passed away ; when nature 
prefigured the resurrection of the just; when patient watchers had 
stood all day by his bed-side; when the sun had set and the gloom 
of night was spreading over nature, but the stars, like angels' eyes, 
began to shine down brightly from above ; then — midwa}^ between 
Ascension Day and Whitsuntide — after an illness of ten days, Dr. 
Nevin breathed his last breath at eight o'clock in the evening, on 
the 6th of June, 1886, in the 84th year of his age. — Thus passed away 
from earth a great and good man, an ornament to the Church, to 
his native State, to his country, to his age, and to the cause of 
science and religion. 

The funeral took place on the Wednesday following, June the 9th, 
and was attended by a large concourse of people. The evening 
trains on Tuesday and the early trains on Wednesday brought 
many visitors from a distance, including a large number of the 
Reformed clerg3 r , Trustees of the College and Seminary, old stu- 
dents and others. Among those who came to honor the memory 
of the deceased was Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander Hodge, repre- 
senting the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, at 
Princeton, N. J., one of the leading thinkers of his denomination, a 
personal friend and admirer of Dr. Nevin, and son of the elder 
Hodge with whom the deceased held an earnest theological contro- 
versy during his lifetime. 

The funeral services were held in the College Chapel, in which 
Dr. C. F. McCauley, Dr. Jacob 0. Miller, Dr. Benjamin Bausman, 
Dr. Thomas G. Appel, Dr. John S. Stahr, of Lancaster, Pa., and 
Dr. A. A. Hodge, of Princeton, N. J., took part. Miss Janie 
Zacharias, of Baltimore, presided at the organ. The simple Burial 



156 IN RETIREMENT EROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

Service of the Church used ou this occasion never seemed to be 
more beautiful, appropriate or expressive, than when read in a 
place endeared by so many associations and to an audience so closely 
knit in a common sorrow. — Dr. Thomas G. Appel, who delivered 
an appropriate funeral discourse, selected as his text the words of 
Christ: "Jesus sai'd unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life; 
he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and 
whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die," John XI : 
25, 26. Below we give his concluding remarks, together with those 
of Dr. Hoclge. 

Forty-one years ago he whose lips are now mute in death, uttered 
these words in a baccalaureate address to the graduating class in 
Mashall College: "Christ is the truth on which all other truths 
rest ; more sure and certain than any or all, as seen apart from His 
person * * * Let Him be the star 3 t ou follow through life ; the 
sun in the firmament of your existence. When far out upon the 
deep, surrounded with midnight and tossed by winds and waves, 
remember Him on the sea of Galilee. When the world is found to 
fade and wither, and life seems turning to an arid sand-waste, think 
of Him as He stood by the grave of Lazarus, or showed Himself to 
Mary on the morning of His own resurrection. When confusion 
and contradiction make themselves felt on every side, and all that 
has been counted solid seems readj^ to give way; when the counsel 
of the wise and prudent fails, and the hands of the mighty become 
weak; when reason is confounded, and science falls into inextrica- 
ble embarrassment ; when clouds and darkness cover the heavens 
with a thick pall, and the soul recoils aghast from the yawning 
abyss of its own nature; when every other confidence breaks, and 
truth itself in eveiy other form is converted into blank despair, 
then turn to Him, with Peter, and say, prostrate at His feet, ' Lord, 
to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we 
believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God."' 

The eleventh chapter of St. John, containing the record of the 
raising of Lazarus, was one of the last, if not the last chapter of 
scripture that was read to him in his illness, shortl} T before his 
death, by a beloved daughter. 

May we not believe that the words of our Lord in that passage, 
which we have made the basis of our remarks at this time, con- 
tinued in his inner consciousness when his outward senses were 
closed to earth, and supported his faith in passing through the 



Chap. LIY] dr. hodge's remarks 757 

valley of the shadow of death? On the hallowed day of rest, as the 
light of the earthly Sabbath faded away, he passed peacefully into 
his heavenly rest. May he rest in peace with those who have gone 
before, " until both they and we shall reach our common consum- 
mation of redemption and bliss in the glorious resurrection of the 
last day ! " Amen. 

At the conclusion of his sermon Dr. Appel introduced Rev. Dr. 
Hodge to the audience, as a friend of the deceased and a representa- 
tive of the Princeton institutions. 

Dr. Hodge said he was not prepared to make an address befitting 
the solemnity and significance of this occasion ; but had come hither 
simply as a representative of Princeton Theological Seminary, and, 
as he believed, of the entire Presbyterian Church, to express their 
sympathy with those assembled at the loss of their great theologian, 
the friend of the speaker's dead father. It was undeniable that Dr. 
Nevin belonged to the Reformed Church; he lived and died in it; 
he was the exponent of that Church and of its institutions; but it 
was always gratefully remembered by the Presbyterians that he 
was of Scotch-Irish blood, born in their Church and educated in 
Princeton Theological Seminary, illustrious in its line. Por many 
years he was a distinguished member of the Presbyterian Church; 
he was too great for any one denomination to lay claim to him. 
The Presbyterian Church regarded him as one of the few great 
theologians and thinkers of America, and everywhere he was ranked 
as one of the greatest three or four citizens whom the great state 
of Pennsylvania had produced. 

Dr. Hodge, the elder, was only four }^ears older than Dr. Nevin. 
Between them was the sincerest affection, and he always regarded 
him as the greatest of his pupils. Sixty years ago when Dr. Hodge 
went to Europe Dr. Nevin acted as his substitute in the Faculty, 
and the speaker well remembered sitting on his lap and listening 
to his words of profound wisdom and eloquence. 

Between these two men a loving friendship ever existed; and 
though their wa}^s separated and serious divergence threatened, 
both recognized the primacj' of the Christo-centric doctrine which 
was the basis of Dr. Nevin's teaching and thinking. Their differ- 
ences were accidental ; their unity essential. 

In conclusion feeling reference was made to the continued friend- 
ship of these two great divines, and to their meeting late in life, 
when Dr. Hodge came here to visit his beloved contemporary. The 
Professor renewed his expression of the tender sympathy of his col- 



158 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

leagues and of all Presbyterianism, and their desire to do common 
honor to their common friend. 

After the conclusion of the services in the Chapel the entire 
audience came forward to the chancel and impressed on their memory 
the lineaments of the great man that had just fallen asleep in Israel. 
His countenance seemed to beam with peaceful serenity, and his 
noble head and brow, with the strong features on which beauty still 
lingered as he lay in the majestic dignity of death, seemed chiselled 
in purest alabaster. Doubtless the question arose in the minds of 
many as they passed by his casket, Can this be death ? 

Death upon Ids face 
Was rather shine than shade ; 
A tender shine by looks beloved made. 

He was buried in Woodward Hill Cemetery, on an elevated spot, 
commanding a fine view of the city and county of Lancaster, where 
the funeral service was concluded, in which Dr. E. E. Higbee, Dr. 
Thomas G. Appel, Dr. Eli Keller and Dr. Theodore Appel partic- 
ipated. — The honorary pall bearers consisted of John C. Hager, N. 
Ellmaker, Rev. Charles L. Fry of the Lutheran Church; Dr. J. Y. 
Mitchell of the Presbj'terian ; Dr. J. Max Hark of the Moravian ; 
and of the Professors, Drs. J. H. Dubbs, J. B. Kieffer and F. A. 
Gast. — Just as the service at the grave was coming to its close, 
sympathizing nature let fall a gentle shower of rain, which de- 
scended softty as her benediction, on the committing of the body 
to the bosom of the earth, looking for the general resurrection in 
the last da}^, and the life of the world to come: through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 

The death of Dr. Nevin made a profound impression in the com- 
munity and throughout the Church. Memorial services were held 
in various congregations; the Classes at their annual meetings put 
on record their sense of Dr. Nevin's great usefulness in the Church; 
and several of the Synods in the fall appointed special commemora- 
tive services at which interesting addresses were delivered by min- 
isterial brethren in memory of the great man who had fallen in 
Israel. 

At the Commencement of Franklin and Marshall College, during 
the week following the funeral of Dr. Nevin, a profound feeling per- 
vaded the minds of those who were present, Trustees, Alumni, stu- 
dents, and of who had in any way become interested in the College. 
The Alumni Association at the time had in contemplation the ob- 



Chap. LIY] tribute of respect 759 

servance of the centennial celebration of the founding of Franklin 
College at Lancaster in 1887 and the semi-centennial of the founding 
of Marshall College at Mercersburg in 1837, and the recent death of 
Dr. Nevin imparted to the movement a healthy, practical direction. 
Measures were initiated to give a new impulse to all the operations 
of the College, and among other things, the endowment of the Pres- 
idency of the Institution with a fund of not less than $30,000, as a 
suitable tribute of respect to the memory of Dr. Nevin, together 
with the preparation of the present volume of his Life and Work. 
Both of these objects, through the mercy and goodness of the 
Father of all, have been consummated during the present year, 
1889. — At this same Commencement of 1886, the Daniel Scholl 
Observatory was dedicated and an address delivered by Prof. C. 
A. Young of Princeton College. The building, with its valuable 
instruments, was the gift of Mrs. James M. Hood, daughter of Mr. 
Daniel Scholl of Frederick, Md.,in honor of her father's memoiy, 
for which she made the generous donation of $15,000. 

During this same j r ear a third monument has been erected to the 
memorj- of Dr. Nevin, which confronts those who enter the College 
Chapel. It is a window of stained glass, erected " To the glory of 
God, Amen ; and in loving memory of John Williamson Nevin," 
and represents St. John, the Apostle, with his attributes, an eagle, 
a book, and a chalice, with his key-note text : " In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God." In harmony of coloring and in artistic workmanship, it will 
be a training in true beauty to the 3^oung who daily gather there, 
and a fitting tribute to one whose memory will be more enduring 
than brass. 

The following graceful Elegy, prepared at the author's request for 
this A'olume, was composed by Rev. R. C. Schiedt, a foreign Ger- 
man, formerly student of Berlin University, but at present Pro- 
fessor in Franklin and Marshall College. 

IN OBITUM JOANNIS W. NEVINI 

Hie, decus nostrum, Musarum cura, Nevinus 
Occidit. Heu, fallax et breve vita bonum ! 

Occidit, heu ! nostri qui gloria temporis ingens 
Multorumque suis dotibus in star erat. 

Nunc quid ego summas tot in uno pectore dotes 
Facta quid seterna laude vehenda canam? 



760 IN RETIREMENT FROM 1876-1886 [DlV. XII 

Quae mea si vellet digno comprendere versu, 

Debilitaturum musa subiret onus. 
Nil illi facilis natura negaverat uni, 

Et dederat largas, more parentis, opes. 
Fervidus hinc animi vigor et quae liquit inausum 

Divitis ingenii vis operosa nihil. 
Et, velut prirnum sine nomine rivus 

Per viridem tenui murmure serpit humum ; 
Mox magis atque magis labendo viribus auctus 

Communes populis sufficit uber aquas. 
Sic artes crevere bonae, sua gloria crevit, 

Adjecitque aliquid proxima quseque dies. 
Hunc puerum vix linquentem cunabula, Musse 

Certatim donis exeoluere suis. 
Testis fortunata Penns3 T lvania nobis, 

Mille potestates, nomina mille docent. 
Hie fuit ; hie studuit ; puer hoc in cespite lusit : 

Hie pater, hie genetrix, hie habitavit avus. 
Illic cognatus, cujus cognomen habebat, 

Yagiit, illustri sanguine natus eques : 
Hie Scotus, quern fama vehet plaudentibus alis, 

Leges per terras donee American erunt. 
Testes sunt Collegia, quorum est dignus alumnus, 

Et Graise et Latiee gloria summa lyrse. 
Namque brevi spatio linguam cognorat utramque ; 

Cum libuit, culte doctus utraque loqui. 
Addiderat Sob^mse jam dulcia munera linguae ; 

Nee minus his judex de tribus acer erat. 
Altera turn rerum varias ediscere caussas 

Et qusecumque latent abdita, cura fuit. 
Sed magis auctorem cognoscere juvit et ingens 

Esse Deum, mundi qui regit hujus opus; 
Ergo Creatorem proprius rerumque Parentem 

Cernere, non dubii pectoris ardor erat. 
Doctrinseque pio cauestis amore calebat : 

Numen adorans spe, Christe benigne, tuum. 
Sic igitur vivens, sic, divine Nevine, 

Coepisti ingenii spargere dona tui. 
Longius et cultor Sophise digressus in hortos, 

Florida de lauro serta virente feris : 
Nos omnes debere tibi genioque fatemur 

Omnia, quae pietas suadet amorque, tuo. 
Testis Mercersburgensis Schola, montium Athena?. 

Testes discipuli, gloria gentis novse. 
Tu prsecepta Dei pandens arcana, docebas, 

Gaudeat ut pura mente fideque coli. 
Censor et auctor eras illustris, acumine prsestans, 

Judicii egregia dexteritate tui. 
Jamque poposcit opem dubiis ecclesia rebus, 

En! sine te nullum, qui tueatur habet. 



Chap. LIV] tribute of respect 761 

Nee minus et dure- adversarum tempore rerum 

Mansisti gratis officio usque tuo. 
Servasti insanis puppim, bone rector, ex undis 

Minante interitu jam pietate falsa. 
Utque tui Christum cognoscant discipulique 

Assumis longi grande laboris onus; 
Nam Pater omnipotens et lucida patris Imago 

Natus et amborum gratia dulcis Amor, 
Dulcis Amor, divinaque potens hominumque voluptas 

Hie regit afflatu pectora casta tua. 
Non levis ambitio non impius ardor habendi 

Nullus in elato pectore fastus erat, 
Provida sed virtus et flore nitentior omni 

Candor et innocua cum pietate fides. — 
Scilicet haec tecum durse solatia mortis 

Affers ad Elysiumque nemus, 
Nee decet aut fas est nos ilium flere sepultum 

Amplius, et lacrimis ponere anolle modum, 
Hie quidem dulces auras et amata reliquit 

Lumina sub gelida contumulatus humo. 
Fama tamen superest, et totum nota per orbem 

Gloria, Castalise quam peperere dese. 
Nee tua longa dies delebit scripta, Nevine! 

Juris in ingenium mors habet atra nihil. 
At tu, Christe, novae qui nobis gaudia vitae 

Reddis, et in supera das regione locum 
Huic abeunti animae placidam largire quietem 

Ne mihi sit pretium mortis inane tuae. 
Quern liquor ille, tuo stillans e vulnere sancto 

Abluat, hos aestus, hanc levet ille sitim ! 
Hospitium tu, Christe, humilis ne despice cordis, 

Dulce tibi soli vivere, dulce mori. 
Corpus et in cineres cum longa redegerit aetas, 

Vivet, et aetatis fama sequentis erit. 
Sidera nunc illic fulgentis semper Olympi 

Cunctaque cognoscit, quae latuere prius, 
Progeniemque Dei majestatemque verendam 

Adspicit et sanctos inter adorat avos. 
Salve, magne parens, alti nunc setheris haeres. 

Et fruere aeternis, quae tibi parta, bonis. 
Terra tuum violis ornet lauroque sepulchrum, 

Floreat aeternis urna beata rosis. 
Ossaque tranquilla semper tua sede quiescant 

Semper doctrinae ad vox tua vivat aquas. 
Interea laudesque tuas nomenque canamus; 

Tu modo da dulci, Christe, quiete frui! 



48 



CHAPTER LV 

WE here furnish the reader with a few letters of Dr. Nevin, 
written to friends in severe affliction. They exhibit his ten- 
derness of feeling in an interesting light, and show how he could 
sympathize with others in their sorrows. The first was addressed 
to Mr. Besore, merchant of Waynesboro, Pa., a prominent elder in 
the Reformed Church, and alwa}^s active in promoting its general 
interests. Late in life he was favored with two lovely children, a 
daughter and a little son. The latter took sick and died, which ex- 
cited general sympathy in the community. 

To Mr. George Besore. 

Mercersburg, Dec. 29, 1848. 
My Dear Sir: — I felt sad on seeing not long since the announce- 
ment of the sad bereavement which has fallen upon you in the loss 
of your only son. Sickness was at work in my own family at the 
time, aud as I looked round upon my eight children, and thought 
how hard it would be to lose one, I could not but enter with lively 
sympathy into the sense of a still more overwhelming desolation 
that must attend your case as called to mourn over the loss of an 
only son. I can well conceive how much of affection and hope 
had been garnered up in the life of your promising boy, and 
how many fond dreams of future usefulness and honor were 
made to centre in his person. You had received him with pecu- 
liar joy as a signal blessing from the hand of God, and you 
pleased yourself with the thought of training him up with a full 
Christian education for the promotion of God's glory in the 
world in time to come. But it has pleased our Heavenly Father 
suddenly and without explanation to withdraw His own gift. Your 
hopes lie buried in the grave, where now sleeps the remains of your 
beloved child, in prospect of the resurrection at the last day ; and 
you sit in spirit as one clothed with sackcloth and ashes, whose 
senses have been well nigh stunned b}^ the blow which has fallen 
upon him from the hand of the Almighty. Truly, it is a terrible 
stroke, and you and your wife both need special grace, to receive it 
with becoming submission. This I trust has not been withheld. 
It is much to know, that while God acts in such a case without 
explanation, He still never acts without reason, and it is still more, 
to be firmly assured by faith that His actions are ruled always by 
righteousness and love. ''He doth not willingly afflict an}^ of the 

(762) 



Chap. LY] letters of condolence 163 

sons of men.'- He is able, moreover, in ways which you cannot now 
understand, to turn this bereavement to jour benefit and His own 
glory, beyond all that might have resulted from the life of your son, 
had he been continued with you according to your desire. 

I write just now as one well prepared to "weep with them that 
weep," for the corpse of my own youngest child is sleeping in its lit- 
tle coffin close at hand, and I expect to follow it in a few hours this 
stormy day to its last resting place in our College Cemetery. We 
have had six cases of measles among us latterly, all of which have 
ended favorably with the exception of the last, that of our sweet 
babe, now nearly arrived at the end of his first year, whose fine 
vigorous constitution seemed more likely to bring him safely 
through than that of any of our children besides. But he was at 
the same time in the severe process of teething ; and the combined 
disorders proved too strong for his tender strength. He became 
affected in his brain, and finally has breathed out his soul into his 
Maker's hands ; last come, and first gone of the little circle of love 
to which he belonged. And now of course I can understand your 
sorrow still better than before, and am prepared to extend to 3^011 
from the bottom of my heart the sympathy which is all in such a 
case that human friendship can extend. May our merciful and com- 
passionate High Priest enrich you with His own " grace, mercy and 
peace," a more substantial benefit than all worldly blessings besides. 
With kind regards to Mrs. Besore, 

Your affectionate friend, 

J. W. NEYIN. 



To Dr. J. C. Bucher, on the sudden death of his two sons on the 
4th of July, 1876. 

Caernarvon Place, July 9, 1876. 
My Dear Brother : — On hearing of your great affliction I felt 
the full force of what is said of Job's three friends (Job ii : 12, 13); 
and even yet it seems as if the case called for the sympathy of sit- 
ting on the ground with you in silence rather than the condolence 
of mere human speech. There is something sacred in such a sor- 
row, which of itself turns into commonplace all ordinary words of 
comfort. And } r et the case goes of itself again in this view to the 
only true foundation of support and relief beyond what is common 
with lighter trials ; for it needs no argument other than itself to 
enforce what all our trials are designed to teach, namely : the one 
great lesson which we are so slow to learn, that all our springs are 
in God and that in ourselves we are literally nothing. Such an 



764 LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE [DlV. XII 

overwhelming calamit}^ as that which has now come upon your 
house, must make it easier for 3^011 to realize this truth just now 
than perhaps ever in your life before. If so, it has not come upon 
3 t ou in vain. If so, it will not need any motive of consolation from 
be} T ond itself to reconcile you to its stroke. For what consolation 
can exceed the assurance that you are the object of God's fatherly 
regard in what has come upon 3 T ou, and that this regard, most as- 
suredly, is directed to nothing less than the everlasting salvation 
of yourself, and all your house. That is the comfort of God's 
Providence universally, as it is so beautifully set forth in our Cat- 
echism ; and an} T chastisement, however sharp or grievous, that ma} 7 
help us to the full sense of it, must be counted as the greatest of 
blessings in disguise. So true is the word, " Blessed is the man 
that endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall receive the 
crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him." 
What we need of all things in our religious life is full faith in the 
Bible as the Word of God, and full belief in Divine Providence ; 
by which I mean a full persuasion that Christ, the Lord of life and 
glory, is actually in His Word from Alpha to Omega, and actually 
in His Providence also to the end of the world ; and in both with 
full living presence for one and the same end, namely, " not to con- 
demn the world but that the world through Him might believe." 
Few in the Christian world at this time believe practically either 
of the two mysteries ; verifying thus the force of our Saviour's in- 
terrogation : When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on 
the earth ? What the ark of the covenant was for the Old Testa- 
ment Israel, that the Bible as the Word of God is for the Church 
still, the place of actual coming together, or meeting of Christ and 
His people ; and what the pillar of fire was before the Israelites of 
old, that the Providence of Christ is still for His Church, a true 
heavenly conduct, which from first to last is ruled b} r infinite wis- 
dom and love, and which in all things is determined only toward 
one end, the eternal well-being of man, as this is the universal scope 
also of the Gospel. In all our sorrows, let us labor to take firm 
hold of this anchor of the soul, which alone is sure and steadfast, 
entering as it does within the veil. 

Mrs. Nevin joins me in this communication. She has been much 
affected, as we all have been, with the teachings of your calamit} r . 
Maj 7 God bless } t ou and your remaining family, and preserve }^ou 
all unto His everlasting kingdom. 

Your very sincere friend, 

J. W. NEVIK 



Chap. LV] letters of condolence "765 

To Mrs. Alexander Brown, sister of Dr. Nevin, on the death of 
her son, Matthew Brown. 
My Dear Sister : — We all mourn with you in the heavy sorrow 
which has come upon your house. It is sad to think of the solemn 
shadow that has thus flung itself across your path. But I have 
come to look at death less in this way than it is commonly sup- 
posed to mean. It is only a stage in the progress of the life we 
have begun here, and where this has been at all in the right direc- 
tion, the change will form no interruption or break in its course. 
We should think of our children, who have gone before us (obeying 
in the Lord), as not dead at all in any sense suggested by the coffin 
and the grave, but as actually alive with all the will and powers 
they had here. Only in fuller measure and degree, they see, hear, 
speak, and act in all manner of ways, in that spiritual world where 
they are, with an enlargement and freedom of existence far beyond 
all that belongs to us who are still here in the natural body. Of this 
I feel very sure and I am sure, too, that all good begun here in any 
life will have the opportunity of growing toward perfection there, 
under the auspices of Christ and His angels; beyond all that any 
such life could have enjoyed by continuing longer in the present 
world. So much, in truth, lies in the idea of God's Providence, 
which is governed everywhere by a regard to the eternal salvation 
of men, and cannot, therefore, possibly be indifferent to this in 
what is brought to pass through their death. Looking at the case 
in this way, you have great cause for consolation in your present 
bereavement. Your son has been taken away from much evil he 
might have had to meet otherwise in this world. He has been 
taken away with a well formed habit of piety (the fear of God and 
a humble regard for His commandments), established in his soul 
from early childhood. The removal has been by the hand of One 
whose interest in his welfare immeasurably exceeds yours, and is 
designed unquestionably to carry out and complete what the grace 
of the Gospel had begun to expect in him before he was thus called 
away. The great thing for you is to be well persuaded of the real- 
ness of the spiritual world (which few in our time think of as other 
than a shadow), and thus to believe firmly that Divine Providence 
is no fiction, a rare belief now even in the Church. God's Provi- 
dence eyes everywhere the eternal salvation of the children of men. 
We' believe in it only as we see in it that meaning. You should see 
it to mean this in the case of your present trial. It means this for 
your dear son, who has now passed out of your sight ; but it means 
this also for yourself, and the family who share with you in this 



766 



LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE 



[Div. XII 



bereavement. It is designed and adapted b}^ the infinite mere} 7 of 
the Lord to promote the eternal salvation of all your house. May 
you all so understand it, and so fall in with it that the chastisement 
shall be found working in you the peaceable fruit of righteousness 
unto everlasting life. Your affectionate brother, 

J. W. NEVIN. 
Caernarvon Place, June 4th, 1876. 



t^.isi. — Xv/". / 



r : > ^ 







- (^K^rr^- 







Notes of a kemarkable sermon preached by Dr. Nevin in the College 
Chapel in the year 1876, found in the pulpit Bible and preserved by a young 
friend.— The Text may be found in the Gospel of St. John. 



Chap. LY] concluding remarks 76T 

Having arrived at the conclusion of his labors, the author deems 
it proper in this place to say a few words in regard to his long jour- 
ney. — It was with a considerable degree of hesitation that he made 
up his mind to comply with the request of his fellow-alumni to pre- 
pare the present volume for publication. But this seemed to be their 
unanimous wish as well as that of a large circle of Dr. Nevin's 
friends. He was, moreover, encouraged by Dr. Philip Schaff, his 
former teacher and colleague, who, at the commencement of the 
College in 1886, told him to devote at least two years to the task. 
This he regarded as wise counsel. — From the start it was evident 
that such a work would be attended with difficulties of no ordinary 
character. In the very beginning it was first necessary to ascer- 
tain some principle which might serve as a guide in the composi- 
tion of the book. There was a large amount of materials on hand, 
but how was he to reduce them to order and the necessary consis- 
tency? To find the thread which was to lead him through such a 
vast labyrinth, he examined many biographies of great men from 
Plutarch's Lives down to the present time. At length he took up 
Neander's Geist des Tertullians,and there he found, as he thought, 
just what he was in search of. In the Preface to his immortal work, 
the great historian has given his reader in a few words the theory 
according to which he believed that the history of a Sapiens teres 
atque rotundus ought to be written. 

" Many persons," says Neander, " with a different conception of 
the historic art from my own and of what is required to present a 
truthful picture of a man, will, perhaps, fail here and there to see 
the truth in the present historical representation. To such it may 
appear that I have not held up sufficiently to view the foreign ex- 
crescences, the baroque, or the abnormal in Tertullian's Life. The 
office of the historian, however, as I regard it, like that of the 
painter, is to let the soul of a man, the animating idea of his physi- 
ognomy, stand out in prominent outlines. It is only in this way 
that we can properly understand what in his character is of the 
nature of caricature, which always tends to obscure the soul and 
idea of the man himself. The latter is something of subordinate 
account and not the chief matter. The lofty mission of the histo- 
rian is to recognize the divine impress in outward appearance and 
to develop this out of its temporary obscuration ; this alone can 
be the lofty mission and aim of the historian, without which it is 
not worth the while to attempt to write history at all. Who thinks 
otherwise on the subject, him I allow to entertain his own opinion." 

Dr. Nevin was much less one-sided than Tertullian, whilst he was 



168 CONCLUDING REMARKS [DlV. XII 

his superior in intellectual and spiritual endowments. He was in a 
certain respect many-sided, which led him to appear under various 
aspects, that did not at the time seem to be in harmony with each 
other. In the warmth of controvers}^ he often found it necessary 
to employ strong language or strong expressions, which led to 
wrong impressions or the appearance of having said more than he 
intended to say. As an humble disciple of the great historian, the 
author 'sought throughout to employ his principle and depict the 
spirit of Dr. Nevin as it appears in his life and writings. In this 
way he found his labors very much diminished, as it remained to 
select only such material as seem to have a more immediate refer- 
ence to the object which he had in view, whilst the balance was left 
behind in the quarry. As in Meander's monograph the quotations, 
after having been selected with care, had to be very extensive, .be- 
cause it is always best to let a person like Dr. Nevin speak for 
himself. It is only in this way, it is believed, that he could show 
what manner of life his was from his youth. With these explanatory 
remarks the book is presented to the public with the hope that with 
its defects, resulting from inexperience in the historic art, it may 
meet with a generous recognition. 

In conclusion, it affords us much pleasure here to acknowledge 
the valuable assistance which, in various ways, we received all along 
from the Publishing Committee of the Alumni Association, espe- 
cially for making themselves responsible for the respectable appear- 
ance of the book; and for the many valuable suggestions, which 
we received, from time to time, from the friends of the enterprise. 
We wish also here to put on record our high appreciation of the 
kindness of the many friends who gave us their generous sympa- 
thy, whilst deeply absorbed in our work. Among these we may^ 
mention, Charles Santee, Philadelphia; Hon. John H. Yand} T ke, 
Milwaukee, Wis.; Hon. Charles E. Gast, Pueblo, Col.; Hon. J. W. 
Killinger, Lebanon, Pa.; Dr. J. 0. Miller, York, Pa.; Dr. E. R. 
Eschbaugh, Frederick, Md.; Dr. S. G. Wagner, Allentown, Pa.; 
Mr. Daniel Black and Mrs. A. Eyerman, Easton, Pa.; S. S. Rick- 
ley, Esq., Columbus, Ohio; Hon. H. H. Schwartz, Dr. A. S. Lein- 
bach and Geo. F. Baer, Esq., Reading, Pa.; B. Wolff, Jr., Pitts- 
burgh, Pa.; E. J. Bonbrake, Esq., Chambersburg, Pa.; and Hon. 
M. Y. L. McClelland, Franklin, Mo. But we desire here more es- 
pecially to render thanks to a kind and merciful heavenly Father 
for the preservation of our health and strength during our pro- 
tracted labors. — Aofa Qeu. 



INDEX 



ABOLITIONISM, 70, 71. 
Absolute Idea, 676. 
Abstract Generality, 370. 
Academy Building, 665. 
Actual and Ideal, 221. 
Esthetics 667-685. 
Alexander, Dr. A., 46. 
Allegheny, 96. 
All and Whole, 370. 
Altlutheraner, 344. 
Alumni Greetings, 635. 
Alumni, Meeting of, 301. 
Alumni, Society of, 249. 
Alpha and Omega. 535. 
American Education, 649. 
American Republic, 641. 
Amusements, Fashionable, 67. 
Andrews, Dr. W. W., 261. 
Anglicanism, 37, 348. 
Anglican Crisis, 310-320. 
Anglo-German Education, 447. 
Anglo-German Life, 252. 
Angina Pectoris, 337. 
Antichrist, 414. 
Anti-liturgical, 730. 
Anti-Puritan, 409. 
Anxious Bench Controversy, 161- 
Apostles' Creed, 86. 153, 560. 
Apostolic Church, Schaff's, 266. 
Appel, Dr. J. H., 514. 
Appel, Dr. T. G., 301, 514, 666, 
Archbishop Leighton, 718. 
Aristotle, 671. 
Armageddon, 493. 
Arminianism, 236, 570. 
Ascension Day, 755. 
Atlee, Dr. J. L., 436. 
Audenried Bequest, 666. 
Augsburg Confession, 151. 
Authority and Freedom, 327. 
Awakening, an Historical, 327. 

Bacon, Dr. L., 338. 
Baer, Geo. F., 745. 
Baer, H. L., 660. 
Baer, Hon. W. J., 656. 
Baird, Prof. T. D., 437. 
Bankrupt in Health, 39. 
Baptismal Grace, 313. 
Baughman, A. H., 514. 



■177. 



686. 



Bausman, Dr. B., 605. 

Bausman, John, 436. 

Becker, Dr. J. C, 92, 243. 

Beck's Logic, 628. 

Berg, Dr. J. F., 227. 

Berg's Last Words, 396-403. 

Berg's Coadjutors, 405. 

Berg, Reply to. 397. 

Bibighouse, Rev. H., 199. 

Biblical Antiquities, 53. 

Biblical Repertory, 253. 

Bib'ical Repository, 253. 

Big Stomach, 266. 

Biography, 591. 

Birney, Judge, 72. 

Birth- Day Present, 722. 

Birth-Days, 754 

Black, Daniel, 748. 

Black, Hon. J. S., 664. 

Bomberger, Dr. J. H. A., 249, 605. 

Book of Common Prayer, 487. 

Borromeo, St. Charles, 339. 

Botany, 43. 

Botch, Much of a, 58. 

Boush, C. M., 514. 

Bowman, Dr. S. W., 432. 

Brave Words, 99. 

Breezy Freshman, 429. 

Brevity and Wit, 683. 

Brown, Dr. M., 65. 

Brownsori* s Review, 321-336. 

Buchanan, Ex-President, 436,601-604. 

Bucher, Dr. J. C, 432. 

Budd, Prof. S. W., 423. 

Burial Service, 756. 

Burlesque, 682. 

Bushnell, Dr., 527-539. 

Caernarvon Place, 64, 444. 
Call Accepted, 97-98. 
Callender, Dr. S. N., 420, 514. 
Calvin, John, 149. 

Calvin, on the Lord's Supper, 237-238. 
Calvinism, 571. 
Calvinistic Theory, 576. 
Carlisle, Pa., 443. 
Caro Christi, 412. 
Carmichael, Rev. John, 64. 
Cast-off-Clothes, 290. 
Catechetical Class, 659. 



(t69) 



770 



INDEX 



Categorical Imperative, 659. 
Catholicity, 369-395. 
Catholic, Not Roman, 232. • 
Catholic Tendency, 310. 
Catholic Unity, 217-226, 257. 
Centennial Celebration, 133, 136. 
Centennial Hymn, 136. 
Cessna, Hon. John, 663. 
Channing, Dr. W. E., 710. 
Charges, at York, 245. 
Christ and the Gospel, 624. 
Christ in Human Nature, 257. 
Christ, the Truth, 621, 623. 
Christian Ethics, 427, 686. 
Christianity and Ethics, 697. 
Christian Intelligencer, 260, 404. 
Christian Ministry, 109. 
Christian Year, 471, 477. 
Christman, A., 429. 
Christo-Centric, 757. 
Christology, Defective, 546. 
Christology, Method of, 624. 
Church Dogma, 256. 
Church of England, 310. 
Church, Faith in, 559. 
Church Fathers, 81. 
Church Feeling, 256. 
Church History, 81. 
Church, Idea of, 557. 
Church or No-Church, 313. 
Church Question, 255, 257, 300. 
Church Year, 462-480. 
Classis of Maryland, 126. 
Classis of Philadelphia, 242. 
Classis of East Pennsylvania, 243, 481. 
Close Vote, 436. 
Coffroth, Hon. A. II., 664. 
College Charter, 440. 
College Congregation, 604. 
College or No-College, 435. 
College Pranks, 435. 
College, Progress of, 629. 
Colonization, 74. 
Colossal Proportions, 639. 
Comic, 681. 
Commencement, 758. 
Complimentary, 737. 
Concrete Generality, 371. 
Conclusions Arrived At, 335. 
Conference at Marburg, 147. 
Confessional Antithesis, 306. 
Confessions and Retractions, 706. 
Confusion of Mind, 42. 
Conscience, 527. 
Conscientiousness, 78. 
Consensus Tigurinus, 282. 
Cousequenzmacherei, 289. 
Consolidation, 433-435. 
Consolidation, Act of, 434. 
Commentary of Ursinus, 405. 
Complaint, Not Sustained, 245. 



Cooper, Dr. Robert, 30. 
Cowbiding, Threat of, 69. 
Craig, T. J., 514. 
Creation, The New, 233. 
Crisis, A Grand, 79. 
Criticisms, 38-39. 
Cultivated Ground, 271. 
Cyprian, 365. 

Dangerous Man, A, 71. 
Dayton, Discussions at, 501. 
Dayton, Serious Charges at, 500. 
Dayton, Moral Victory at, 505. 
Davy, Sir Humphrey, 458. 
Death of a Father, 60. 
Debating Club, 43. 
Decided Stand, 160. 
Decidedly Nestorian, 289. 
Defeat, A Confession of, 69. 
Defects. 87. 

Demund, Rev. I. S., 602. 
Denominations, 223. 
Der Man fuer Uns, 659. 
Determinism, 693. 
De Imitatione Christi, 720. 
De Unitate Ecclesiae, 365. 
De Witt, Dr. T., 10, 605. 
Diagnothian Literary Society, 424. 
Dialectic Thorns, 319. 
Dick, Dr., 219. 
Dickinson College, 26. 
Dignity and Decorum at York, 248. 
Dilemma, A, 432. 
Diogenes, 685. 
Discourses and Tracts, 66. 
Discussions at York, 248-250. 
Distance and Enchantment, 675. 
Distinct Understanding, 159. 
Distillers, 59. 
Divine Trinity, 748. 
Diversions, 43. 
Dogmatic Slumbers, 83. 
Dorner, Dr., Answer to, 728. 
Double Dyspepsia, 42. 
Drum Ecclesiastic, 511. 
Dualistic Theory, 574. 
Dubbs, Rev. Dr. J. H., 243, 656. 
Dutch Delegates, 404. 
Dutch and German, 408. 
Dutch Reformed Divines, 261. 
Dyspepsia, 40. 

Easter Communion, 752. 
Easton, Pa., 128. 
Early Christianity, 337-368. 
Easy Diction, 310. 
Ebrard, Dr., His Kritik, 485, 605. 
Ebrard, Dr., Dogmatik, 404. 
Ecclesia Docens, 327. 
Ecclesiastical Libel, 241. 
Editorial Committee, 301. 



INDEX 



111 



Editors of Review, 301. 
Edwards, 693. 
Ejaculatory Prayer, 753. 
Election, 572. 
Elect of St. Paul, 577. 
Elk Lick, 659. 
Elliott, Dr. D., 62. 
Ellmaker, Nathaniel, 436. 
End of All Things, 646. 
English Establishment, 316. 
Episcopacy, 315. 
Epoch at York, 249. 
Eras of Controversy, 250, 507. 
Ernesti, 706. 

Eschbach, Dr. E. R., 748. 
Ethics, Christian, 686. 
Ethics, Philosophical, 686, 700. 
Evangelist, An, 65. 
Evangelical Review, 267, 304. 
Excitement at Lancaster, 435. 
Excursions, 59, 129. 
Expulsion, An, 429. 
Extremes, 410, 582. 
Eyerman, Mrs. A., 748. 

Fact of Sin, 536. 
Faculty Organized, 441. 
Faculty Reorganized, 630. 
Faith, 457. 
Fair Orphans, 425. 
Farce, A, 71. 
Farewell Words, 439. 
Fatalism, 693. 
Fellowship with God, 626. 
Festival Days, 471. 
Fichte, J. H., 686. 
Fighting Raccoons, 657. 
First Adam, 219, 258. 
First Impressions, 101. 
Fiske, Dr., 62. 
Fisher, Dr. S. R., 92. 
Fixed Ideas, 399. 
Flight of Time, 262-264. 
Forgetting the Past, 409. 
Formal Opening, 445. 
Formula of Concord, 305. 
Fountain of Truth and Reason, 618- 

621. 
Franklin College, 432-433. 
Franklin, Hon. Thomas E., 663. 
Frederick the Third. 151. 
Freedom of Thought, 251. 
French Language, 43, 189. 
Friend, The, 68. 
Fruits, Good and Evil, 511. 
Fullerton, M. L., 49. 

r\ ala Days, 426. 
\J Garrison, Mr., 71, 648. 
Gast, Hon. Charles E., 748. 
Gast, Dr. F. A., 758. 



General Assembly, The, 75, 229. 

General Conventions, 94, 605. 

General Truths, 670. 

Gemiith, 194. 

Gerhart, Dr. E. V., 301, 441, 722. 

German Character, 111. 

German Church, 293. 

German Churches, 113. 

German Element, 447. 

Germanizing, 729. 

German Language, 80, 187. 

German Sermon, 130. 

German Theologians, 289. 

Gloninger, Dr. J. W., 434. 

Gnostic Christ, 748. 

Gnostic or Ebionitic, 715. 

Gcethean Literary Society, 424. 

Gcerres, 741. 

Good, Dr. J. H., 514. 

Good Management, 425. 

Good Results, 431. 

Grace or Charm, 679. 

Grseco-Roman Church, 332. 

Grand Physique, 603. 

Great Enthusiasm, 629. 

Greding, Rev. P., 514. 

Green, Dr. Traill, 422. 

Greenwalt, Dr. E., 175. 

Gross, D. W., 514. 

Gross, W. D., 514. 

Gross Insult, 307. 

Gustavus and Cromwell, 643. 

Hager, Christopher, 436. 
Hager, John C, 658. 
Halsey, Dr. S., 59, 84. 
Hallowed Spot, 440. 
Humes, Dr. S., 436. 
Happy Reply, 722. 
Harbaugh, Dr. H., 301, 605. 
Harbaugh Hall, 665. 
Hark, Dr. J. Max, 758. 
Harlot of Rome, 227. 
Hayes, Hon. A. L., 436, 445. 
Hebrew, Study of, 49. 
Hegel, 253, 667. 

Heidelberg Catechism, 145, 146, 605. 
Heidelberg Catechism, Critical Edi- 
tion of, 605. 
Heilman, Rev. C. U., 665. 
Heiner, Dr. Elias, 244. 
Hengstenberg, 233, 344. 
Herbruck, Dr. P., 512. 
Herder and Lowth, 713. 
Herman, Dr. H. M., 512. 
Hermeneutical Progress, 706, 714. 
Herron, Dr., 55, 63. 
Herzog, Dr., 605. 
Hess, Rev. Samuel, 243. 
Heyser, William, 434. 
Hierarchy, Papal and Episcopal, 253. 



112 



INDEX 



Hiester, Hon. W., 436. 

Higbee, Dr. E. E., 302, 758. 

High and Low Church, 87. 

His Grace of Canterbury, 317. 

Historical Development, 360-361. 

Historical Introduction, 605. 

Historical Learning, 597. 

Historical Society, 607. 

History, Faith in, 597. 

History, Imagination in, 597. 

History, Last Problems of, 645. 

History, Lectures on, 590-604. 

History, Objective, 593. 

History, Philosophy of, 594. 

History, Rationality of, 596. 

History, Sense of, 597. 

History, Subjective, 593. 

Hodge, Dr. A. A., 755. 

Hodge, Dr. Charles, 46, 55, 281. 

Hodge, On the Ephesians, 566-589. 

Hoffeditz, Dr. T. L., 199. 

Hoffman, D., 664. 

Holy Catholic Church, Its Nature and 

Constitution, 218-226. 
Hopefulness, 299. 
House and Farm, 444. 
Humanitarianism, 700. 
Humanity and History, 612, 618. 
Humor, 683-685. 
Hundeshagen, Dr. 605. 
Hyper-Physical, 522. 

Idea and Form, 669. 
Idea of Religion, 691. 
Idea of Right, 689-690. 
Idea of Social Integration, 689-691. 
Illustration, An, 75. 
Inaugural Address, 108. 
Incarnation, The, 235. 
Incendiarism, 72. 
The Independent, 376. 
Indifferentism, 693. 
In Earnest, 116. 
Innigkeit Gottes, 696. 
Inspiration, A Daring, 93. 
Interior Sense, 747. 
Interesting Sight, 752. 
Intolerance, 74. 
Inward and Outward, 465. 
Irvingism, 320. 

TAHRBUCHER, 737. 
Janeway, Dr., 59. 
Jenkins, Mrs. Catharine, 64. 
Jenkins, Mrs. C, Death of, 443. 
Jenkins Family, 63, 64. 
Jewish Year, 475. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 399, 440. 
Johnston, Dr. G. H., 658. 
Jure Divino, 348. 
Justification, 75. 



Kant, 107, 167. 
Kelker. Rudolph F., 434, 514. 
Keller, Dr. Eli, 758. 
Kendig, Rev. J. M., 512. 
Kemmerer, Dr. D., 512. 
Kerclienfreund, 266. 
Kerschner, Prof. J. B., 666. 
Kessler, Dr. J. S.. 607. 
Keystone State, 445. 
Kieffer, Prof. J. B., 666. 
Kieffer, Dr. M., 605. 
Killinger, Hon. J. W., 441, 630, 748. 
Kinderlehre, 659. 
Kirchenschmerz, 415. 
Knapp, 705. 

Kceppen, Prof. A. L., 442, 
Konigmacher, Hon. J., 436. 
Koplin, Dr. A. B., 657-661. 
Krause, Hon. D., 434. 
Krauth, Dr. C. P., 304. 
Kremer, Dr. F. W., 514. 
Krummmacher, Dr. F. W., 199. 
Kuelling, Dr. J., 514. 
Kuhns, Benj., 514. 
Kurtz, Dr. B., 244. 

Ladies' Seminary, 65. 
Lake, Rev. D. E., 512. 
Lane, Miss Harriet, 601. 
Lane Seminary, 72. 
Lange, 729. 
Latin Elegy, 760. 
Last Baptism, 753. 
Last Communion, 752. 
Laying of a Corner Stone, 657. 
Leberman, Rev. J. J., 512. 
Leinbach, Dr. A. S.. 768. 
Leiter, Dr. S. B., 512. 
Lemmata, 688. 
Leonard, Henry, 628. 
Letter to George Besore, 762. 
Letter to Mrs. A. Brown, 765. 
Letter to Dr. Bucher, 763. 
Lewis, Prof. T., 409. 
Licensure. 55. 
Life at Princeton, 46. 
Literary Halls, 628. 
Little Children, 753. 
Liturgical Committee, 482. 
Liturgical Movement, 481-514. 
Liturgy, Basis for, 486. 
Liturgy, Dr. Mayer's, 490. 
Liturgy, Historical Defense of, 502- 

506. 
Liturgy, New, 1857, 485. 
Liturgy, Old Palatinate, 485. 
Liturgy, Revised, 494-506. 
Liturgy, Vindication of, 498. 
Logic and Rhetoric, 249. 
Long, Hon. H. G., 436. 
Low Church, 313. 



INDEX 



773 



Lusus Naturae, 340. 
Luther, Martin, 146. 
Lutheran Confession, 304-309. 
Lutheranism, 308. 
Lutheranism, Old, 87. 
Lutheran Observer, 163. 
Lutheran Standard, 155-156. 

Man of Sin, 229, 400. 
Man's True Destiny, 455-461. 
Marriage, 63. 
Matter or Stoff, 673. 
Mayer, Rev. J., 129. 
McCauley, Dr. C. F., 755. 
McCook, General, 502. 
McLelland, M. V. L., 748. 
Mease, Dr. S., 512. 
Melanchthon, 123, 149, 237. 
Memorial Services, 758. 
Memorial Window, 
Memorizing Scripture, 757. 
Mercersburg College, 655. 
Mercersburg Review Founded, 299. 
Mercersburg Theology, 250, 416. 
Merciful Latin, 403. 
Metaphysical Beauty, 668. 
Methodism, 166. 
Middle Spring Church, 31-32. 
Miller, Hugh, 529. 
Miller, Dr. J. O., 751. 
Miller, Dr. Samuel, 46. 
Milnor, Dr. Joseph, 84. 
Milnor's Church History, 339. 
Miracles, Continuation of, 547. 
Miserable Madness, 748. 
Mish, H. A., 299. 
Mistake Rectified, 430. 
Mitchell, Dr. J. Y., 758. 
Modern Civilization, 324. 
Mcehler, 741. 

Monthly, A High-toned, 69. 
Moody, Dr. John, 30-31. 
Moore, Prof. W. W., 666. 
Morbid Piety, 41. 
More Laborers, 115 
Mosheim, 84. 
Mottos of Review, 301. 
Much Work, 438. 
Miiller, Dr. Julius, 729. 
Mull, Prof. G. F., 666. 
Murdock, Dr., 104. 
Music of the Spheres, 677. 
Mutual Recognition," 102. 
Myerstown Convention, 510. 
Mystery of Godliness, 542. 
Mystery of the Creed, 459. 
Mystical Presence, 237-267. 

"VTaturalism, 562. 
J_\ Natural and Supernatural, 529- 
550. 



Naive, 681. 

Neander, Dr. Aug., 80, 600. 

Nettleton, Rev., 37. 

Nevin, Alfred, 26, 

Nevin, Alice, 64. 

Nevin, Blanche, 64. 

Nevin, Cecil, 64, 740. 

Nevin, Daniel E., 28. 

Nevin, Daniel and Margaret, 26. 

Nevin, Edwin Henry, 26. 

Nevin, Elizabeth, 26. 

Nevin Family, 25-28. 

Nevin, Herbert, 64. 

Nevin, John and Martha, 26-27. 

Nevin, John Williamson, Jr., 740. 

Nevin, Dr. J. W., Bacalaureate, 454. 

Nevin, Dr. J. W., Birth, 28. 

Nevin, Dr. J. W., Commencement 

Address, 634-654. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Death, 755. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Early Youth, 29- 

34. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Election, 441. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Funeral, 755. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Ill-health, 439. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Letter of, 633. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., The Marble Man, 

248. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Mystical Tenden- 
cies, 74. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., President Pro 

Tern., 631. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., In Retirement, 439, 

443, 740. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Articles in Review, 

302-304. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Religious Training. 

29-33. 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., Theology, Notes 

on, 419, 
Nevin, Dr. J. W., at York, 248. 
Nevin, Margaret, 26. 
Nevin, Martha Finley, 64. 
Nevin, Martha Mary, 64. 
Nevin, Robert, 64. 
Nevin, Robert, J., 64. 
Nevin, Theodore, 64. 
Nevin, William W., 64. 
Nevin, Prof. William M., 28, 423. 
Nevin, Letter of Prof. William M., 430. 
New Brunswick Review, 408. 
New Church, 425. 
New Impulse, A, 116. 
New Life, A, 258. 
Newman, Dr. H. M., 319. 
Noble Head and Brow, 758. 
Non Sectarian, A, 225. 
Nomanalist, A, 294. 
No Sect Party, 223. 
Not a Mere Weathercock, 321. 
Nott, Dr. E., 35. 



TT4 



INDEX 



Berlin, Ohio, 404. 
Observatory, 759. 
Objectivity, One-sided, 735. 
Ocean of Mist, 752. 
(Ecolampadms, 285. 
Offense, An, 70. 
Old Dualism, 47. 
Old Heretics, 81. 
Old Man Eloquent, 754. 
On His Knees, 753. 
One Whole Hemisphere, 307. 
Omni Laude Cumulatus, 431. 
Opposite Wings, 340. 
Op as Operatam, 328. 
Orderly Sergeant, 44. 
Ordination, 65. 
Origin of Evil, 540. 
Orr, Col. J. B., 434. 
Our Relations to Germany, 728. 
Oxford, 348. 

Pacific Railroad, 646. 
Paganism, 553. 
Pagan Year, 472, 
Painting for Eternity, 459. 
Parker, Theodore, 648. 
Palm Sunday, 603. 
Pan-Anthropism, 669. 
Pantheism Discussed, 336. 
Papal System, The, 243. 
Parthian Arrow, 73. 
Particeps Criminis, 401. 
Party Spirit, 117-125. 
Pascal and Fenelon, 343. 
Paternal Discipline, 429. 
Patterson, Hon. D. W., 436. 
Peace Commissioners, 514. 
Peace Measures, 513. 
Pedantics, 315. 
Pelagianism, 167, 168, 259. 
Pennsylvania Dutch, 43. 
Personality of Satan, 542. 
Peters, Hon. A., 436. 
Peter's Faith, 564. 
Philadelphia, Discussions at, 508. 
Philip of Hesse, 147-148. 
Phillips, Wendell, 648. 
Pia Desideria, 714-722. 
Pile of Bricks, 423. 
Pillars of the Church, 59. 
Plain Anglo-Saxon, 405. 
Plato and Socrates, 123. 
Platonism, 124. 
Pleasant Commencement, 301. 
Pleasant Surprise, 429. 
Poet and Philosopher, 741. 
Polemical Mud, 738. 
Political Reorganization, 640. 
Political Year, 469. 
Politicians, 434. 
Pomp, Rev. Thomas, 131, 243. 



Porter, Dr. T. C, 409, 437, 605, 632. 

Position Defined, 157. 

Potter, Right Rev. A., 445. 

Practical Divinity, 285. 

Practical Lessons, 363. 

Practical Reason, 522. 

Preaching Extempore, 57. 

Presbyterian Review, 295. 

Presbyterian, Schism of, 77. 

Predestination, 572. 

Premonitions, 755. 

Preparatory Department, 424. 

President of Marshall College, 422-431 

Princeton Review, 103-104, 267, 751. 

Princeton Review on Principles of Prot- 
estantism, 251-262. 

Princeton Seminary, 45. 

Professing the Creed, 297. 

Profound Impression, A, 758. 

Protestant Banner, 227. 

Protestantism, Principle of, Arraign- 
ed, 242-243. 

Protestantism, 228, 241. 

Protestant Quarterly, 396. 

Protestant Theology, 735. 

Proudfit, Prof. J. W., 405. 

Pulpit, The, 109, 110. 

Pure and True Church, 229-239. 

Puritanizing, 410. 

Puritan Theory, 348 352. 

Puseyism, 252, 317, 414. 

Puseyite Tendencies, 254. 



Q 



uaint Poem, 33-34. 

Questions, Clear Cut, 418. 



Rabies Theologica, 501. 
Race Street Church, 493. 

Ramsey, Rev. Wm., 157-159. 

Rationalistic Supernaturalism, 715. 

Rauch, Dr. F. A., 100-138. 

Rauch, Dr. F. A., Eulogium of, 141- 
144. 

Rauch, Dr. F. A., Sketch of, 137-144. 

Rauch, Dr. F. A., Psychology of, 
103-107. 

Rauch' s, Dr. F. A., Psychology, Re- 
viewed by Dr. Kevin, 105-107. 

Reactionary Subjectivity, 735. 

Real Presence, 253. 

Realist, a, 294. 

Reason and Will, 522. 

Rectus in Ecclesia, 250. 

Redemption, 699. 

Regeneration, 699. 

Refined Sensualism, 678. 

Reflections, 386-395. 

Reformed Church, 92, 113. 

Reformed Dutch Church, 259. 

Reformirtes Kirchenbuch, 485. 

Reformed, Not Ritualistic, 507. 



INDEX 



7T5 



Reformed Monthly, 509. 
Reformed Synod, 1873,722. 
Reigart, Hon. E. C, 436. 
Reiler, Dr. I. EL, 512. 
Religious Excitement, 158. 
Reminiscences, 87, 91, 493. 
Representative Men, 591. 
Resting in Peace, 298. 
Retrospective View, 723-727. 
Return of Peace, 511. 
Reynolds, John, 436. 
Rickenbaugh, Martin, 434. 
Rickley, S. S., 748. 
Riddle, Dr. D. H. s 92. 
Romanizing, 410. 
Romanizing Tendencies, 226. 
Romish Baptism, 229. 
Romanism, Theory of, 326. 
Romanism Versus Rationalism, 251. 
Rothe's Theory, 359. 
Ruby, Hon. Henry, 434. 
Ruetenik, Dr. H. J., 514. 
Rum-selling, 66. 
Russell, Dr. G. B., 605. 

SABELLIANISM, 741. 
Sacraments, 154. 
Salem Reformed Church, 422. 
Samsonian Shoulders, 426. 
Santee, Charles, 768. 
Sayre, Robert, 64. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, 82. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, Election of. 441. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, Inaugural of, 217- 

226. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, Remarks on New 

Liturgy, 487-493. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, Report of, 485. 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, York At, 249. 
Scheele, F. W., 514. 
Schiedt, Prof. R. C, 666. 
Schell, Hon. Peter, 434. 
Schelling, 667. 
Schiller, 667. 
Schleiermacher, 253, 729. 
Schneck, Dr. B. S., 94. 
Schneck, Mrs. B. S., 92. 
Schotel, Dr., 605. 
Schwartz, Hon. H. H., 768. 
Scientific Statement, 273. 
Scougal, Henry, 718. 
Second Adam, 259. 
Second Mecca, 440. 
Sect System, 414. 
Seibert, W. H., 514. 
Self-Criticism, 82, 84. 
Self- Criticism in 1870, 701-702. 
Self-Defense, 70-71. 
Seminary, Western, 54. 
Sensible Letters, 51, 52. 
Sermon, Notes of, 766. 



Shaw's Immanuel, 718. 
Significance of the War, 638. 
Slavery, 70. 
Sleeping Giant, 445. 
Smith, Frederick, 434. 
Smith, Prof. G., 643. 
Smithsonian Institute, 651. 
Socrates, 685. 
Solger, 672. 
Solemn Prayer, 95. 
Solemn Remarks, 159. 
Solemn Warning, 74. 
Somebody's Folly, 426. 
Something of an Event, 267. 
Sophomorical Scraps, 407. 
Spicy Letter, A, 160. 
Spirit of the Age, 459. 
Spirit and Flesh, 459. 
Spiritual Manifestation, 544. 
Squire Cook, 160. 
Stahr, Prof. J. S., 666. 
Star of Empire, 642. 
Steiner, Dr. L. H., 514, 755. 
Sterling Qualities, 111. 
Stop the Liturgy, 509. 
Strassner, Rev F., 512. 
Stuart, Prof. Moses, 703. 
Stuart's Commentary, 704. 
Studien und Kritiken, 267. 
Subjective and Objective, 331. 
Such a Hope, 415. 
Sufficiently Egotistic, 322. 
Swedenborg Emanuel, 324, 740. 
Synod of Baltimore, 485. 
Synod of Chambersburg, 1862, 494. 
Synod of Easton, 1869, 494. 
Synod General at Dayton, 497-502. 
Synod General, 1863, 495. 
Synod General, 1869, 508. 
Synod General, 1878, 512. 
Synod of Hagerstown, 1848, 482. 
^ynod of Lancaster, 1864, 495. 
Synod of Norristown, 1849, 482. 
Synod of Ohio, 495-497. 
Synod of York, 1866, 244-248, 496. 
System of Nature, 608-612. 

Taney, Roger B., 26-27. 
Taste, 679. 
Taylor, Isaac, 354. 
Taylor, Lewis, Prof., 253. 
Temperance Cause, 59. 
Temptations of the Age, 647. 
Tercentenary Monument, 606. 
Testimony, A Beautiful, 60-61. 
Testimony of the Soul, 456, 556. 
The Man, 421. 

Theory of Development, 255. 
The Difference, 286. 
Thiersch's Lectures, 358, 740. 
Thirty-nine Articles. 295. 



11Q 



INDEX 



Tholuck and Olshausen, 714. 
Thomas a Kempis, 720. 
Thoughts on the Church, 551-563. 
Time, a Fragment, 265. 
Titzel, Dr. J. W., 32, 302, 514. 
Tons, Henry, 514. 
Tractarianism, 87. 
Translations, 191. 
Transcendentalism, 94. 
Trausubstantiation, 261. 
Tribute of Respect, 754. 
Triennial Convention, 202. 
Trinity Reformed Church, 425. 
True, Beautiful and Good, 670. 
True End of Being, 457. 
True Education, 427. 
Truth and Life, 623. 
Tubingen, School of, 731. 
Tulpehocken, 130, 
Two Charges, 227. 
Two Great Divines, 756. 
Two Opinions, 435. 
Two Parables, 29. 
Two Schemes, 587. 
Two Things, 527. 
Two Views of the World, 373. 
Two Wings of Protestantism, 237. 



Ullman, Dr. Carl, 267, 605, 733. 
Unanimous Election, 95. 
Unchurchly Extremes, 256. 
Unchurchly Spirit, 548. 
Undying Life in Christ, by Dr. J. W. 

Nevin, 607-627. 
Union College; 35. 
Unio Mystica, 270. 
Union with Christ, 234. 
Universe Organic, 750. 
Unser Freund, 658. 
Ursinus College, 655. 
Ursinus, Zacharias, 157. 
Useful Lesson, 649. 

Vacant Seat, 752. 
Valedictorian, 431. 
Valedictory, A, 69. 
Van Alpen's History, 131. 
Van Dyke, Dr. H. J., 295, 343, 409. 
Vandyke, Hon. JohnH., 748. 
Venom, 399. 



Verbalism, 746. 
Virtue, 694-696. 
Vis Vivifica, 412. 
Vischer, F. Theodore, 672. 
Vital Questions, 300. 
Voice of Nature, 456. 
Voice of Revelation, 456. 

Wallace, Rev. John, 63. 
War, The, 75. 
Washington, 124. 
Wagner, Dr. S. G., 748. 
Weekly Messenger, The, 127, 260. 
Weiser, Dr. C. Z., 514. 
Welker, Dr. G. W., 514. 
Wesleyan Movement, 716. 
Westminster Confession, 295. 
Wheatland, 603. 
Whitsuntide, 755. 
Wilhelm, Benjamin and Peter, 658. 
Wilhelm, Family, 657. 
Wilhelm Family Bequest, 662. 
Williamson, Captain John, 27. 
Williamson, Dr. H., 25. 
Williard, Dr. G. W., 405, 512. 
Wilson, Bishop, 338. 
Windsor Place, 443. 
Winters, Dr. D. H., 512. 
Wirt, Henry, 514. 

Woodward Hill Cemetery, 632, 758. 
Worldly Mindedness, 127. 
Wolff, Barnard, 434. 
Wolff, Dr. B. C, 128, 131, 245, 422. 
Wolff, Dr. B. C, as Agent, 655. 
Wolff, B., 748. 

Wonderful Nature of Man, 525-575. 
World Crisis, 756. 
World in Middle Ages, 442. 
World Historical, 643. 

Year 1889, 759. 
Yesterday, To-day, and Forever, 
607. 
Young, Prof. C. A., 759. 

Zacharias, Dr. D., 482. 
Zacharias, Miss J., 755. 
Zahner, Dr. J. G., 512. 
Zuilch, Rev., 243. 
Zwingli, Ulrich, 145-146, 237. 
Zwinglianism, 285. 



LR F Fe?tt 



C\ 



